But now, the world had shifted, and so had the things I cared about. The most important thing to me was Halle, and even after two miles with her small yet surprisingly heavy frame, the goal of getting her to Mom kept my feet moving forward.
We talked while we walked. We ate while we walked. We drank and laughed. All the while, we moved toward the next town, only pausing for bathroom breaks.
"I'm hungry," Halle said just as we reached the crest of a hill.
The sun was hot, and none of us were used to hiking such a distance.
"It's snack time, isn't it?" she asked.
"We've got to conserve food, Halle. We don't know how long we'll be out here."
"What does that mean?" Halle asked.
I held out my hand to her. "It means, we can't have snacks. Three meals a day--that's it until we find more food."
Halle frowned. "But we'll be with Mom tonight. She can make us something for dinner."
"We won't see Mom tonight unless we find a car. It's a long way on foot."
"How long?" she asked.
Dad glanced back at me. When I didn't have an answer, his expression perked up. "Maybe a couple of days, Pop Can. No worries. We'll get there."
"A couple of days?" she asked, her tone rising with each word.
I cringed. Dad did, too.
"Sorry, kiddo." That was all he could offer.
I squeezed her hand. "The more we walk, the closer we get."
"No snacks?" she whined, her bottom lip pulling up.
At the top of the next hill, for only the third time in as many hours, we stopped.
Tobin pointed. "What's that?"
"Jesus in Heaven," Tavia said, dabbing the sweat from her neck and chest.
"Infected," Dad said. "Maybe ten?"
Tavia held her fingers to her forehead to block out the sun. "They're too far away. Maybe they're people?"
Dad pulled his binoculars from his bag and held them up to his eyes. He quickly pulled them back down. "Damn it."
"What do we do?" Tavia asked.
"We can't get through them," Dad said. "All there is between us and them is pasture."
I looked around. "See any farmhouses or barns?"
Dad used his binoculars and turned in every direction. "Just a pump house. Doesn't look big enough for all of us to fit."
"Okay," Tavia said. "What do we do?"
Dad held out his hands and then let them hit his thighs. "Find a place to hide? Hope they turn in a different direction?"
"You've got a scope," I said. "Use it."
Dad looked down at his gun. "You just want me to open fire on a bunch of pe--"
"Infected, Dad. You said it yourself. They're infected. And there are too many of them to handle."
Dad's T-shirt was damp with sweat. Still, he used it to wipe his face. His five o'clock shadow was crowding his dry lips.
"Dad?" I said.
"I'm thinking."
"You've also got the gun you took off the bridge."
"I know." He narrowed his eyes at a row of round hay bales. "Tavia, get the kids on top of those. I'll climb onto one a little closer and then fall back to you if I have to."
"That's your plan?" I asked.
Dad grit his teeth. "Jenna, damn it, would you just do what I say?"
"I know how to shoot a rifle," I said.
"No."
"But--"
"I said, no! Now, get your ass on that hay!" He pointed with one hand and thrust the binoculars at me with the other.
I frowned as I snatched the binoculars from his hand, and then I led Halle to the field, stepping through freshly cut grass to the round bales.
Gripping his hunting rifle, and with the semiautomatic hanging from his shoulder strap, Dad walked west, toward the group of infected. I helped Halle climb up first, and she helped pull Tobin while Tavia and I pushed. Then, I cupped my hands and helped give Tavia a leg up. It wasn't perfect, and it took her a couple of tries, but she finally climbed to the top and then reached down for me.
"I've got it," I said.
"You sure, honey?" She watched me climb to the top.
"Yep," I said, breathless but smiling, as I sat next to her.
My mood didn't last long. I held the binoculars up to my eyes and located my dad. "He's picking a round bale. They're still a ways from him."
"It's stucky," Tobin said, trying to wipe the hay off his hands.
"It's just for a bit," Tavia said, pulling him onto her lap and brushing the hay from his clothes.
"He's getting into position." I watched Dad lay onto his stomach before he pulled the pin on his rifle. "I hope he remembered to keep his ammo handy."
Tavia hummed in disapproval. "You sure don't trust your dad, do ya?"
I lowered the binoculars and looked at her. "He...yeah, he's smart. But my mom loves this stuff. I just wish she were here. She thinks ahead. Dad thinks about...girls."
"I bet she doesn't love it now, and I bet the only girls your dad is thinking about are his own."
I made a face, embarrassed, and then I put the binoculars back up to my eyes just as Dad took the first shot. "He got one!"
He shot again, and his body jerked with the recoil.
"He got another one!" I let the binoculars fall to my lap. "It's really loud. It's going to draw more."
"We'll just have to skedaddle before then, won't we?" Tavia said.
Dad shot several more times. He didn't even have to fall back. He took down most of them and then hollered at us to climb down.
"C'mon, Halle!" I said after I hopped down. "Jump!"
She leaned over, her hands reaching out for me, and then she fell forward. I barely caught her. I set her feet on the ground and then held out my hands while Tavia lowered Tobin to me.
"Hurry!" I said to Tavia.
She climbed down fairly quickly, and we jogged to the hay bale Dad had shot from, but he was on the other side of the road, diverting the few infected that he couldn't bring himself to shoot.
"Look away, Halle," I said.
Tavia shielded Tobin's eyes as we hurried past, a tiny sob escaping from her throat.
Dad danced around the infected children with various wounds, all three of them younger than me. I only looked long enough to make sure they weren't following. When I heard three cracks, my shoulders shot up to my ears.
"Did you..." I began.
Dad shook his head, having a hard time with concealing his emotions. "Just made sure they couldn't keep up. Walk faster."
He picked up the pace, and we did the same, desperately wanting to create distance between us and the mess of bodies we'd left behind.
In the distance was a field full of scrap metal, old cars, and a few rusted tractors.
"Daddy! Cars!" Halle said.
"We won't be going anywhere in any of those, Pop Can. They're just there for parts."
"Oh," she said, deflated.
"Cars, Mama!" Tobin said, pointing.
Tavia touched her fingers to his dark hair. "That's right! You are so smart!"
He hugged his train.
If we had to travel with a toddler, I'd pick Tobin any day. He was quiet, and he minded his mother. Tavia could keep him calm when necessary. We had been so lucky so far. I wondered how long that would hold out.
"Cars, Mama!" Tobin said again.
An engine sounded in the distance, and Dad herded us off the road. The sun hit the vehicle just right, so it took a minute for me to see that it was a silver minivan. They were going so fast that I wondered if someone was chasing them, but the moment they saw us, the tires slowed.
A man about Dad's age rolled down the window. A dark beard surrounded his hesitant but polite smile. "Going to the next town?"
His wife sat in the passenger seat, looking behind her and whispering, comforting whoever was in the backseat.
"For now," Dad said. "We ran out of gas a ways back."
The man looked to his wife, and she gave her permission.
"Listen," he said, lo
oking to Dad, "it's too dangerous to walk. We're headed to Shallot. My in-laws live there. We've been driving all night from Midland."
"You made it here all the way from Midland?" Dad asked.
"It wasn't easy," the man said, holding up a pistol.
His wife held up one, too, looking sheepish.
Dad glanced down the road. "We would appreciate you taking us as far as you can. I have some money--"
The man held up his hand and shook his head. "It'll be a tight fit with the kids back there, but you're welcome to ride along."
Dad turned to Tavia, and she let out a breath of relief.
"Thank you, Jesus," she said. "C'mon, Tobin. You found us a car!"
The man hit a button on the ceiling, and the side door slid open, revealing a girl a little older than Halle, maybe ten or eleven, and a boy Tobin's age.
"Well, hello there!" Tavia made her way to the third row, past the two captain's chairs the children were seated in.
She sat next to the wall and situated Tobin on her lap, leaving plenty of room for Halle and me, but I wondered where Dad would fit.
"Just, uh...your littlest can fit nicely on the floor between our kids, if you don't mind," the man said.
Dad climbed in and sat near the other wall, and I sat in the middle. Halle sat on the floor in front of my feet, scooting back against my legs.
The door glided closed, and then the man pressed on the gas. A wave of relief washed over me.
"I'm Brad," he said, looking into the rearview mirror for a moment. "My wife, Darla," he said.
She turned around and flashed a sweet smile.
"Our daughter is Madelyn, and our son is Logan."
Dad pointed to himself. "Andrew." He pointed to the rest of us. "Tavia, Tobin, Jenna. And Halle is on the floor."
Everyone traded the customary nice-to-meet-yous.
For the first time in hours, I felt my body slowly relaxing from being on alert since I'd opened my eyes that morning. It didn't take long to realize that none of us smelled very good.
"Dad," I whispered, "we are stinking up their car."
"Sorry," Dad said to the adults in front. "We've been walking all day. We don't mean to offend."
"Don't worry about it. We're not at our best either," Brad said. "Her parents were supposed to head down to visit later today, but when we heard the reports, we knew they wouldn't chance it, and Shallot is tiny. We'll have a better chance there than in Midland Her parents would worry if we didn't come."
"I'm taking the girls to their mom. She's not far from there."
"If we can, maybe we could run you up there in the morning? Depending on the gas situation, of course. We just used our last can an hour ago."
"That would be ..." Dad laughed once, his shoulders relaxing as relief washed over him. "That would be extremely kind of you." He hooked his arm around my neck and pulled my temple to his lips. "We're going to be okay, kiddo. You'll be with your mom this time tomorrow."
"Don't jinx it," I said. "We're not there yet."
"WHAT THE HELL?" Brad said, stomping on the brakes.
Just as I reached for and missed Halle, Darla whipped around and caught her before she hit face-first into the console.
"Whoa!" Darla smiled at Halle when she looked up. "You okay, sweetie?"
Halle nodded, and then Darla looked expectantly at her own kids. They bobbed their heads at the same time.
Dad leaned forward. "What is it?"
Brad was watching the north side of the road, and we all--with hesitation--moved our lines of sight in the same direction.
An old two-story church was crawling with those things, as if it had been infected itself. They wriggled in and out of the broken stained-glass windows, like maggots squirming in the open wounds of a dead animal. Large shards of partial picturesque art hung from the tops of the window panes, and the jagged edges of wooden planks stuck out from the walls from which they were still nailed.
"Do you think people are stuck in there?" I asked.
"Lord, I hope not," Tavia said, her big eyes looking up toward the second floor.
Brad drove past slowly, and he pointed up. "Look there! An open window! They got out!"
"But look at all the blood on the side of the building," I said, noting the dark red smear leading from the AC unit to the roof.
"Mommy?" Madelyn said, her voice trembling.
"It's okay, honey. We're going."
The infected noticed the van, and one by one, they began filtering out of the church.
"Go, Brad," Darla warned. "Hurry!"
Brad pressed on the gas, and the van surged forward. Just as he got back up to speed, someone ran in front of the van, a woman, with her hands waving in the air.
"Stop!" she screamed. "Please!"
"Brad!" Darla shrieked.
Brad yanked the wheel to the right, crashing hard into a truck parked in the middle of the road. I managed to grab Halle this time, holding her shirt tight in my fists. She flew forward, toward the driver's seat, and my shoulder rammed into Logan's booster seat, but I didn't let go. The shirt choked Halle for half a second, but other than that, she was unharmed.
Tobin was crying, and Tavia was checking him over.
Brad and Darla both looked dazed, half-wondering what had happened and half-worrying what would happen next.
"Mommy!" Madelyn said again.
Logan began crying, too.
"Andrew! Is Tobin okay? He hit his head!" Tavia said with a strained voice. She was trying to keep calm.
Dad reached for him and pulled down one of his lower lids to get a good look in his eye.
"We've got to get out of here," Brad said. "Unbuckle your seat belt, Maddy!"
"Open the door!" I said, lunging forward.
Madelyn reached for me, so I helped her get unbuckled, and then I did the same with Logan. I put my hands under Halle's arms and lifted her up and forward, taking a big step out of the passenger-side sliding door. I was glad this van was the kind that opened on both sides. We wouldn't have been able to get out on the other side.
I glanced back at the church, at least a quarter of a mile behind us. "Halle?" I said, leaning down to look into her eyes. "Are you okay?"
"My throat hurts," she said, rubbing the red line the collar of her shirt had left.
"Sorry," I said, hugging her.
I took a quick sweep around the truck and van, looking for any more infected, and then I stopped at the front. The two vehicles, an old green truck and Brad's silver van, were twisted together, both of their guts exposed and intertwined.
A dark, oozing liquid crept slowly from beneath the wreckage. "Something is leaking!" I said, pushing Halle backward.
Dad appeared next to me, holding Tobin. "That's...not from the van. That's..."
I leaned down to peek under the mangled vehicles to see a waif of a girl, not much older than me, lying beneath the van. One of her arms had been severed by the driver's side tire, and it was barely visible behind the tire.
"Oh my God, did I hit someone?" Brad said.
Darla covered her mouth.
"She was already dead," I said. "She was shot in the head. Probably infected."
Dad leaned down. "Looks like she'd been sick a long time before catching the zombie virus."
"Don't say that," Darla said. "Zombies--that's ridiculous," she spoke the words with a nervous giggle, like it was against her nature to speak up like that, but she had to say it out loud just for her own sanity.
"Are you okay?"
We all turned around to see a woman standing in a dress. It was once a red dress with white polka dots. Now, it was just red. One section of her frazzled dark hair was still tied back. Three children, a girl and two boys, stood behind her, wide-eyed and afraid.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Are we all right?" Brad stepped toward her, his expression severe.
She retreated back a step, holding her arms out, shielding the children with her body.
"We had a pe
rfectly good vehicle! We were nearly to our destination! What the hell were you thinking, running out in the road like that?"
"I'm sorry," she said, her eyes glistening. "I was trying to get us a ride out of here."
"Brad," Darla said, touching his arm.
Brad pulled away from his wife. "A ride? How did that work out for you? Now, none of us have a damn ride! I have kids, too! You nearly got them killed!"
"I was...I was desperate!" she said, taking a step forward. "The town is overrun. It's just me and these kids, and I...I wasn't thinking. I'm so sorry."
Brad looked back at the vehicle and then threw his keys. They skipped across the asphalt and landed somewhere in the grass on the other side.
"Can ... can we start over?" she asked. "My name is April. I have a house over there. You're welcome to stay. Please ... please stay."
"Get your bags," Dad said. "We have to move."
"We have a house," the woman said. "O-over there. My husband boarded up some of the windows. If we're quiet, they won't bother us."
"Where's he?" Dad asked.
Her eyes danced between each of us, and then she simply shook her head.
The little girl--her hair, when it was clean, was probably nearly white--was younger than Tobin and Logan but not by much. She reminded me a lot of Halle when she had been that age. The boys were younger than me and looked nothing alike. They were scared to death. The older one had big green eyes and a splash of freckles across his nose, and the younger one had brown eyes, his sandy-blond hair already overdue for a haircut.
Tavia glanced at the approaching mob of infected slowly limping and stumbling toward us from the church.
"We'll have to run," the woman said. "We can lose them around the elementary school, and then we can sneak in through the back."
"Of the school?" Darla asked.
She shook her head. "It's full. You don't wanna go in there. Not all the kids were picked up in time, and..." She trailed off, blinking away whatever images were in her head.
"C'mon, boys," she said after picking up the little girl.
We quickly gathered our belongings and followed. We ran into the grass on the south side of the road, went across an overgrown empty lot, and continued behind the elementary school. The woman stopped there, her labored breathing making her chest heave. Dad was holding Tobin for Tavia, and Brad carrying Logan.
We had way too many little kids in our party. No one who got far on zombie television shows ever had this many kids under ten.