Her thoughts rambled on and on:
The wound on his neck . . . Did the creeper attack him? He was searching for supplies and was attacked and wounded. Then he shot the creeper. Then he was immediately infected and turned into a creeper—within a few days, hours or minutes?
She had no idea how long ago he had been attacked. But, she hadn’t noticed anything unusual yesterday, for as she recalled his gate had been chained.
So the event, whatever it was, had occurred recently as far as she could tell. It seemed so . . . unreal: like some far-fetched scene right out of a grade B horror movie starring Vincent Price and Boris Karloff complete with hokey looking extras playing the deranged, mangled victims turned into real-life monsters. Impossible?
Scarlett’s mind was set, and so was the alarm clock: she would leave at dawn, for that’s when
they
, the creepers, seemed to be the least active.
Scarlett’s attempt to leave Roseville turned out to be much more complicated than she had anticipated. Every interstate on-ramp she had tried was cluttered with abandoned vehicles, blocking the on-ramps and exits of Interstate 80.
Around noon, she finally decided to try her luck with the back roads and drove west on Baseline Road. Much to her relief, the country roads were clear. Occasionally she passed an abandoned vehicle on the side of the road, but all in all, everything actually appeared to be normal. Definitely a good sign,
until she realized that she hadn’t seen a single person, and there had been absolutely no oncoming traffic at all.
In urgent need of a pit stop and gas, she stopped at a roadside deli; its blinking neon-pink OPEN sign beckoned her to pull over. “Electricity! They have electricity.”
I can’t wait to actually talk to a real live person.
Scarlett resisted the urge to go running into the deli shouting, “Help, I’m the only person left in the world!” Instead, she cautiously opened the glass door plastered with vendor signs: Red Bull, California Lottery Tickets Sold Here, Budweiser, and a collage of other labels. The lights were on, and she heard the humming of a machine in the background, so she expected to see a cheery face behind the deli counter. But no one was here to greet her. The deli’s curved glass display case was empty. Still, she expected to find someone minding the deli, and she quietly searched for the humming source.
She walked around the empty bins that once held the usual eat-on-the-run snacks like beef jerky and chips and cookies. The deli was barren of all the products it so boldly blasted on the windows: all its shelves were empty. After she was confident that the store was free of any creepers, she decided to check out the rooms in the back of the deli. The restroom was definitely first on her agenda.
Scarlett found her way to the deli’s back office and noticed what she thought was an old ham radio sitting on a paper-cluttered desk next to a plate of food, and a glass mason jar of water.
Someone’s here!
She stood in silence searching the room for any more signs of life. Then reality set in, the plate of mashed potatoes, green beans, and what appeared to be ham, buzzed with several pesky flies, a sign that the food had been forgotten about. Although the food was somewhat fresh and wasn’t moldy yet; someone had been here recently.
She finally located the humming source in a storage room, where a large orange and black generator sputtered and then faltered when she entered the room.
Probably needs more gas . . .
Several red fuel cans caught her attention.
I really need that gasoline.
The Kia was almost out.
Should I just take it
—
and risk going to jail
?
Who would believe my reasoning: I thought it was the end of the world? Yeah, right.
Unscrewing a cap, she took a quick whiff and the familiar intense odor filled her lungs; it was definitely gasoline, three cans of it. Despite her urgent need, she couldn’t bring herself to steal a can.
She left a yellow sticky-note on the door to the supply room: HI, I’M SITTING IN THE PARKING LOT. I NEED YOUR HELP. PLEASE SEE ME ASAP. The note idea did seem a bit silly, but she assumed the employee or deli owner was nearby. When he or she returned, he would most certainly go to that room first to start the generator?
Right?
Maybe she could bargain for some gas; she had plenty of cash in her wallet.
Scarlett sat in the car under a shady tree and waited in the hot, August afternoon only daring to leave the windows open a few inches; she was accustomed to the heat by now. And even though she hadn’t seen any signs of creepers, she still couldn’t shake that unnerving feeling that something wasn’t right here. Would these people help her? Did they know what was going on? Her thoughts rambled from one thought to another like a toddler asking a never-ending barrage of irrelevant questions.
Scarlett had been so caught up in her quest to find people that she had ignored her hungry stomach for as long as she could. She rummaged through a bag of supplies she had loaded in the passenger’s front seat.
Yum, a can of tuna and a package of Ritz Crackers.
She dumped the can of tuna onto a paper plate and mixed it with several tiny, plastic packets of Miracle Whip. She had always been in the habit of saving those annoying little condiment packets of ketchup, mayo, soy sauce; alas, she had found a use for them. She kept an eye on her surroundings as she spooned bites of tuna with the crackers, surprised that not a single car had passed by since she’d been here—another ominous sign.
By 6:30 in the evening, she was starting to get worried, more like paranoid. It was all she could do to control her already rattled nerves and her restless thoughts. She should probably just leave, but she needed that gas. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to steal it. So she sat in the car reasoning out the best plan of action.
A thunderous boom quaked the parking lot, startling her from her ceaseless anxious thoughts. “What was that?” She slipped out of the car, automatically grabbing the bat this time and stood in the middle of the road to investigate. Off in the field across from the deli, a billowing cloud of black smoke began to plume. Something had just exploded. She waited to hear the sirens—expecting to hear them—needing to hear them—not hearing them.
A movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Far off in the distance, she could barely make out a myriad of small black specs. She stood in the middle of the road watching as the specs appeared from all directions and awkwardly scurried towards the burning building, which looked to be a food processing plant next to a row of tall silos.
Must be a granary
, she thought. What remained of the granary was now a humongous fireball mushrooming in the sky, and Scarlett couldn’t take her eyes off its mesmerizing flames.
A familiar, unnerving sound startled her, and she reeled around to see hundreds of little black specs growing in size right before her eyes. Creepers!
They
were everywhere, all heading towards the explosion en masse. Soon they’d be close enough to see her. On impulse, she ran back into the deli and stole one of the gas cans, leaving two behind for the owner. She skidded off in the Kia, sliding on the gravel shoulder and had to swerve the car to avoid slamming into a pack of
them
that had appeared from out of nowhere, nearly sideswiping a utility pole when the car fishtailed by.
Had
they
been here all along, hiding in the golden fields of wheat that had never been harvested? How could so many creepers suddenly be—everywhere? It didn’t make sense. Where had
they
all come from?
She continued down Baseline Road trying to calm her racing heart. “It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s OK,” she uttered, trying to convince herself. She was shocked to see packs and packs of creepers making their way towards the explosion for about a mile as she drove towards Sacramento. “Does that mean
they
have super-hearing abilities?” Of course, it had been a loud explosion. But,
they
even seemed to know in which direction the explosion had come from.
Must be an instinctual thing.
When she had finally passed the droves of migrating creepers heading towards the explosion, she pulled over and emptied the entire can of gasoline into the gas tank. “There, that ought to do until I find a gas station,” she said it reassuringly enough, but the thought worried her.
Scarlett’s drive to Sacramento seemed surreal; she hadn’t seen a single person (normal person) the entire trip. She finally ran into CA-99 and headed south. Once again, she found it to be clogged with ownerless vehicles but not nearly as congested as in Roseville, and she managed to squeeze the small KIA between the mass of vehicles like some idiotic motorcyclist with a death wish. She had long since given up on
not
hitting anything. By the time she exited CA-99, her poor car was riddled with dents and scratches; even the front bumper was hanging on for dear life as it scraped the pavement. She couldn’t help but think:
Hope my insurance covers this.
Scarlett finally reached the small community of Natomas, but the freeway was absurdly jammed. It seemed impossible. The Arena Boulevard off-ramp was one huge parking lot of abandoned vehicles. She ended up turning around on the shoulder and took the previous exit.
For some reason, she couldn’t see the actual arena that was usually visible from Arena Boulevard. She decided that she must be lost again, and she headed in the opposite direction. She found it maddening that all of the entrances to the arena were barricaded. So she continued driving around the area until she found a small opening between two yellow school buses.
Can I make it through?
It was the only way in as far as she could tell. Already frazzled, she cringed at the sound of metal scraping metal, that unbearable screech, like the sounds of metal fingernails raking a chalkboard.
Attempting her way to Sports Parkway, she drove around the back of a maintenance building lot and used a maintenance access road to connect to the arena’s main road. Once on Sports Parkway, she was amazed at the rows and rows of city buses and charter buses parked on the side of the road. The buses were all empty: just like in Roseville.
Her heart palpitated faster and faster as she slowly passed the never ending line of buses; had all of those buses been full of people?
Is this where everyone is?
Had the entire city of Roseville been evacuated to Natomas? She was surprised not to see any police or any attendants monitoring the area.
When she finally reached a point in the road
not
blocked by the empty buses, she screamed in utter despair, “Dear God!” The Sleep Train Arena, once home to the famous (or not) Sacramento Kings, had been completely destroyed. Not even a fire could do that. No. It had definitely been bombed.
“Shit, shit, shit!” She pounded her fist on the steering wheel and inadvertently managed to beep the horn several times in her anguish. She had really expected—really
needed
to find help at this Major Shelter Center: the police, the military or FEMA, just one single living
human
being.
Is that too much to flippin’ ask?
It had taken her all day to get here. And even worse, she had most likely ruined the car’s paint job and all for nothing. A movement in the rubble caught her attention. The rubble appeared to be growing in size; then she realized it was moving towards her, a mass of charred things. A rather large pack of creepers had spotted her and was crawling and hobbling directly towards her. She whipped the car around. “
Now what? Now what
!” She ranted hysterically.
Think!
OK, OK, Natomas—what’s in Natomas?
She racked her brain for ideas. She used to have a boyfriend that lived in Natomas; he used to take her to the Kings’ games.
Jeff. Whatever happened to him?
As she recalled, he didn’t live far from the arena. Irrationally she convinced herself that Jeff was home—this very second, and she drove to Innovator Drive, all the while peering out the window in a furiously frantic fervor of fear.
First of all, it was ludicrous to think Jeff would even be home.
Yeah, right, he’s lounging in his favorite chair drinking a Corona
. Secondly, he probably wouldn’t answer the door if he saw her through the peephole. (That relationship had not ended well.) And thirdly, the world had gone mad. Natomas seemed to be deserted too. But she needed a plan, anything to hold on to. She drove around searching for his townhouse, remembering his unit was near a park.
Jeez Louise, all of these townhouses look the same.
“There it is,” she gasped, recognizing the greenish-blue patio furniture on the front porch. Ignoring the red painted curb, she parked the car, no time to find a parking spot and at this point, definitely not too worried about a parking ticket.
Scarlett frowned at the sky; it was getting late, almost dark. She grabbed her purse, bat, and the rifle that she had stolen or rather acquired from the hermit neighbor, turned creeper. Out of habit, she rang the doorbell, even risked turning the knob of the front door, but it was locked, and no one answered.
Really, what did you expect?
She stood completely still. Shuffling noises from around the corner of the building turned her legs to lumps of lifeless logs. She couldn’t breathe as fear filled her lungs. She had a feeling that the pack of creepers she had passed a minute ago was probably already hot on her trail.
How do they always find me?
She needed to find sanctuary: pronto. But, Scarlett had never broken into a home before and didn’t have the slightest clue of what to do. Suddenly, she felt the back of her neck tingle, and a voice in her head warned her, and she listened.
Scarlett snatched a plant-less clay pot heavy with dried soil, slamming it into the golden-glass entryway window next to the front door without thinking of the possible consequences. The deafening sound seemed to echo off the walls and her heart. With no time to waste, she quickly knocked out the remaining protruding shards with the bat and squeezed into the small opening, daring to steal a glance over her shoulder just as a pack of creepers came into view.
They
saw her. And
they
eagerly juddered towards her like anxious mangy puppy dogs from hell.