Elixir (Red Plague #1) (Red Plague Trilogy) (18 page)

I pretended to sort my gear, but I was too distracted and jumpy. Did I carry around an unnatural level of anger, just under the surface, because of what my brother did? And because I hadn’t said anything to anyone after Mason threatened Mom? Or because my dad left me to go to work when he could have stayed?

Maybe
.

But how did I get rid of it? How would Russell purge
his
fury?

“Let’s pack up quick and get on the road,” Pollard announced. “I’ve had enough of this place.”

Maybe it was silly, but I topped off the bottle Ben had given me and tucked it into my backpack for later. Even though I already had a perfectly good canteen.

Within moments our camp was reduced to four backpacks, a doll in a baby carrier, and a rolled tent. Pollard used bungee cords to attach the tent to the exterior of my pack so it wouldn’t go to waste. Everyone savored a final swig of clean water, and then we clamored off the roof and checked the gas levels in the dirt bikes.

After re-filling from the gas cans, Pollard caught me alone standing by the side of the building.

“He didn’t mean it,” Pollard began. “Russell. He’s just…”

“Sad, I know.” I didn’t hold it against him. He seemed like an okay kid. I remembered what I’d been like right after my mother was killed, and I was no ray of sunshine, that’s for sure.

Pollard leaned in, past an invisible line, and our eyes locked. I blinked first.

“And I’m sorry too about the, uh.” He picked at the wall behind me, flaking off old paint and plaster.

The kiss
.

I knew exactly what he was talking about. “It’s okay,” I assured. “I’m not mad.” I’d been around him long enough to tell he wasn’t a creep. In the kitchen he’d misread a signal or two.

I rubbed at my bottom lip.

“I just… I like you,” he said.

I wiped my entire mouth and then stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Oh.”

He eased off the wall and leaned even nearer, way into my personal space. “You’re interesting and deep. I get that.”

I briefly caught his eye. Maybe he did. “I like you, too,” I said and then flushed red. “But,” I added, and it was a big
but
, “I’m so focused on finding the cure,” I mimed blinders on a horse, “I can’t think about anything else.”

Russell climbed onto his bike and assisted Hunny behind him. “What are we waiting for?” he shouted.

“Slow,” Pollard whispered near my ear, gesturing for me to precede him. “We’ll go slow.”

The boys fired up the dirt bikes and, on the I–40, we passed the sprawling Atlantic Mills mega mall with its thirty-screen theater and one hundred fifty different shops, not including the hotel and restaurants ringing the property. Dozens of Reds roamed the parking lot, and every one of them looked up as we zoomed by.

As the sun beat down on my head and shoulders and the wind blew air, heavy with moisture, through my hair I thought of Ben, where he was, and what he was doing. I wished I could explain why Ben was so fascinating, since my interest in him was causing problems in the group. It was part him protecting us from a pack of Reds, part him copying my message on the parking lot, and part him going out of his way to bring me water. When he wasn’t supposed to care about anyone anymore.

But if I actually found my dad’s elixir and someone at Camp Carson mass produced it, the world was going to be a very different place that included both survivors and Reds. I had no clue how my dad’s antiserum worked except that it counteracted and blocked the symptoms of 212R, but people like Ben might need extensive care. They and their rehabilitation would be part of our lives. Why not discover as much as I could about them now? Especially one who acted so human?

I doubted Pollard would see it that way. He was so focused on rebuilding what had once been he didn’t recognize how much things had changed.

With the roar of the bike engine in my ears I didn’t hear the pack of zombies until they stepped out from between two pickups, at least a dozen of them. Pollard tensed, the bike wobbled as if it too was unsure how to react.

Pollard punched up the throttle and plowed into the Reds, who were so spooked they only had time to reach out thin arms and bony fingers. The bike sluiced through the group, and then tipped and skidded away on its side. I fell, my head banged into the dry earth, and I tasted dirt. But I climbed to my feet as the group of frenzied zombies pulled down Russell’s bike.

“Pollard,” he howled. “My gun!”

Hunny leapt like a bunny and sprinted up the embankment.

I screamed her name, and she ran to me through a gap in the pack.

Russell, though, couldn’t break free. He made a last, nonsensical squeal that sent shivers of horror zipping along my nerve endings. Those zombies pressed him into the ground and dug their fingers into him.

Everything went quiet for a single, heart-breaking moment.

“No, Russell!” Before I could stop him, Pollard tore his gun from his belt and shot at the mass of arms and legs, but all it did was draw the zombies’ attention to us.

The instinct to flee was so strong the muscles in my calves and thighs clenched as if I crouched on the starting block of a one hundred meter sprint. I couldn’t be around killer zombies and guns going off. I had to put distance between all this threat and me.

“We have to run!” I grabbed his free hand and pulled hard. “Pollard, we have to go. Now!” He resisted until I got in his face. “They’ll kill us all.”

I didn’t want to leave him behind, but I would if I had to, in order to survive.

There was a whoosh and then a
boom
as Pollard’s dirt bike caught a spark and all that gasoline exploded. Heat and fumes blew against my face, but we cut to the right and sprinted away from the Reds. Pollard and Hunny were faster, but my knee was healing and I kept up.

We ran off the freeway, circled a smashed delivery van, and broke into the first house we saw. Pollard barricaded the door, and we stood in the wrecked living room panting for air. It was even hotter inside than it was outside, and I scrubbed sweat from the back of my neck.

Hunny clung to Pollard’s waist and whined, a kind of nonverbal plea to fate or God or whatever.

This wasn’t good enough. I paced the room.

I didn’t need a hiding place. I needed to
run
.

“I can’t stay here,” I announced, my voice loud in the room crowded with overturned furniture and tossed cabinet drawers. “The Reds are too close.” If they ran after us, which of course they would, they’d be at the door in moments. No wood or glass or stucco would keep them out for long.

Reds would tear a house to the foundation with their bare hands to eat prey cornered inside.

Pollard stomped across the room, groaning in pain. But not the physical kind. “Russell and Shelly.” He slugged the wall and a spider web crack appeared in the plaster. “God, Russell and Shelly.”

“Pollard,” I said gently. We didn’t have time to grieve. Later, sure, but not now.

“I’m such a failure,” he shouted, and I cringed at his tone. “They trusted me to take care of them, and they’re dead.” He marched to the opposite wall and slammed his head against the drywall. “They were just kids.”

“Pollard!”

A trickle of blood rolled down his brow. “They trusted me. I’m a curse. I kill people.”

“Pollard,” Hunny screamed, wrapping her arms around him. “You have to take care of me.”

He seemed to come back to himself. “I know,” he said, his arms hanging limp at his sides. “I know.”

“You’re bleeding,” I said, approaching slowly. I pulled my spare tank top from my pack and wiped his brow.
Thinking it’s your fault
. That was kind of a specialty of mine. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He stared at me with glassy, unfocused eyes. “I’m not a soldier. I don’t know what I’m doing,” he whispered.

“It’s okay. I don’t either.”

No one in this new world was stable. I thought of Ben following me into Raleigh and watching from afar. There would have to be new definitions for things like
normal
and
stable
and maybe even
human
.

Hunny’s whining morphed into full on crying.

I didn’t think Pollard would say any more, but finally, he said, “Do you know where we are? I don’t want to go in the wrong direction.”

Nodding, I pulled out the map and then passed my full canteen around. We weren’t exactly on the move, yet, but at least we were talking about leaving.

“We’re on Hammond,” I said, studying the tiny street names. “We need to head north until we get to West Peace. Then we’ll be really close.”

I re-packed my bag and stood at the broken window, watching for the pack of Reds, or another one like it. Simone had said there were more of them in the cities, but this…

I’d never considered one of us would die for the cure.

I hung my head until my chin bumped my chest. Russell hadn’t deserved that kind of end. We hadn’t exactly been besties, but I’d never wished him dead.

Except he was.

To get the cure to 212R he’d given his life.

Hunny reared up in front of me, her eyes pink from crying, and shouted, “I hate you! It was your stupid idea to go to your stupid dead father’s lab!” She clenched her fists, and her skinny body vibrated with rage.

I knew exactly how she felt.

It was easy for her to blame me for everything bad that had happened in the last few days. She was too young, too angry, and too sad to realize I felt the same way. We were both alone. Neither of us was living the life we’d envisioned. She could hate me if it made her feel better.

“I need to keep moving,” I repeated. Staying there was suicidal. We’d all end up like Russell if we didn’t hurry.

“Fine,” Pollard snapped. “Let’s go.”

“Look for a car with the keys still in it,” I said. Speed was our best advantage.

“Okay.” Pollard holstered his weapon and peeked out the front door. “All clear,” he whispered. “Stay close.”

Crouching in his shadow, Hunny and I followed him out. He headed for the street and a tangle of smashed automobiles, opening car doors with care. Down the block he found one with keys in the ignition, but its rear bumper was wedged too tightly between a pair of mini vans to drive.

We kept walking along Hammond Street, and then he found a truck with its nose on the sidewalk. The keys lay on the floorboards. Pollard tried it, and it started right up.

“Hop in,” he said. “I don’t know how close those Reds are.”

I rolled down the window to release the cloying heat from the vehicle’s interior and climbed into the passenger seat. But Hunny insisted on riding wild in the truck bed. There were no more traffic rules or highway patrol. Just the zombies and us. So, I didn’t argue.

It almost felt like the old days. Me riding shotgun. I pictured this street the way it had probably looked a few months earlier. The abandoned cars and trash and debris were all gone. I saw normal, busy people driving to work or the mall or the beach. No one was sick with anything worse than a head cold. And no one had any idea of what was coming.

I closed my eyes and let the song knocking at my mind’s side door to rush inside.
Way down here. I disappear. My heart hurts when you leave…
It wasn’t the sort of song I wanted to be hung up on for days. But maybe if I wrote it,
purged it
, I could move forward and compose the kind of upbeat melody I loved.

“Which way?” Pollard asked, driving half in someone’s front yard, half in the gutter.

I pulled out the map. “Go straight for a while. Then turn right on Vitriol.”

He plowed over garbage cans and sideswiped a bus stop bench before stopping dead at a clogged intersection. Some panicked citizens had crammed their cars in until they’d created a wall of cold, twisted metal. With less than a meter to squeeze through, even up on the sidewalks, we were stuck.

“This all better be worth it,” he said as we piled out of the truck and set out north on foot. “Don’t tell me we went through all this for nothing, Maya.”

Chapter Sixteen

Hammond Street was covered in random trash and debris, and here and there I saw a shoe or some jeans I was fairly certain covered a human body, but I didn’t look too closely. I didn’t want to see the remains of the people who’d once lived there. Watching Russell die had soured my insides so badly I didn’t think I could handle any other evidence of zombie violence.

I just wanted to get to the lab, and then get out of the city.

We passed Hoke and Bragg Streets and a nail salon on the right, its facade untouched as if the owner had stepped out for a moment. Inside were wall shelves covered in colorful polishes that would never be enjoyed again.

Past the nail place was a Mexican fast food restaurant. A door banged, and we all jumped. I grabbed Hunny’s sleeve and yanked her behind the nearest vehicle. Pollard, like a human shield, put himself between us and the noise.

A pack of zombies emerged from the small restaurant, stumbling and shuffling away from our hiding spot. There were two females and six males. One of the men wore a suit and tie.

My dad had worn suits to work every day. There were black ones and blue ones, and he chose the color by his mood each morning. His ties were mostly serious work types—solid red or black or navy. But he had one tie in his closet that was neon green with yellow SpongeBobs all over it. Every once in a while he would show up in the kitchen for breakfast wearing it, and we’d both laugh at how goofy he looked. But he’d say he was in a SpongeBob kind of mood, and he would go to work.

I missed that. Mornings with my dad, just talking about nothing while he poured cereal or packed a lunch. I missed seeing him smile. I missed his voice. I missed every little thing about him.

“They’re gone,” Pollard whispered. “If we go around, we should be okay.”

I blinked away a veil of tears and pulled Hunny to her feet. She violently shrugged away from me and edged closer to Pollard. And for some reason the rebuff hurt more than it probably should have. Two days ago I couldn’t wait to get away from Hunny. What did I care? She wasn’t my sister. I’d only just met her.