“Yours?”

I lifted up my shirt, and shined the light on my side. “This isn’t looking good.”

Dave winced. “Fuck. You have an infection.”

“I just said that.”

“The skin is so red around that cut.”

“It’s more than a fucking cut,” I said. The stitches were all pretty much missing. Gene had done a great job sewing me up, but there just wasn’t the luxury of resting to let it heal properly. “My skin is hot as shit, too.”

Dave put the back of his hand on my forehead. I pulled away. “Stand still, asshole.”

I let him feel my head. “Well?”

“You have a fever. A bad one, friend.”

“I’ve taken aspirin. I don’t want to use up the whole supply.”

“Aspirin isn’t going to cut it. You’re past that. You need antibiotics.”

“Thank you, Dr. Dave.”

Dave laughed, and pushed me. “Go fuck yourself.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Waiting for the radiator to cool and adding water did nothing. The engine still did not start. I turned the key and pressed the gas pedal.

“You’re going to flood it,” Andy said.

I lifted my foot. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Well, don’t flood it.”

I gritted my teeth. No one knew shit about engines. We all took turns throwing out problems. Transmission. Alternator. Battery. Belts.

Charlene knelt beside me. “What do we do now?”

Finding another bus was not likely. Looking for an SUV made sense. We were in trouble. Michelle was in rough shape. She was still asleep. There was no way she could walk, anyway. Carrying her would be a worse idea. She’d have to wait here. Someone could stay with her. “Charlene, Dave and I are going to look for another vehicle,” I said.

“You’re leaving us?” Melissa said.

“We’re coming back.”

“It’s the middle of the night. Does it make sense to go out this late?” Andy looked from me to my daughter, and over his shoulder at Dave. “You might as well rest. Go in the morning.”

Of course that was a far more attractive offer. At this point, I’d pick procrastination over most any option. I was tired of always being on the go, pro-active, defensive. I didn’t really want to go out looking for another ride. I wanted the bus just to work. “We could go in the morning,” I said, but didn’t want to lose time. We were so close. “Dave?”

“I agree. The morning sounds good,” he said.

I looked at me daughter. She nodded. “First light?”

“First light,” I said, agreeing to wait until the next day. “We should try to get some rest. All of us.”

No one looked comfortable with going to sleep. Thing was, we were in a disabled bus on the Interstate. If zombies attacked, we were trapped. I figured as long as we didn’t make noise, kept the lights inside the bus off, we should be alright. Might not be much consolation, but there wasn’t much more we could do, or that could be done. It was what it was.

And what it was, was bad.

#  #  #

Thursday, November 5th, 0700 hours

The three of us climbed out of the bus. “Keep everything locked up,” I said.

Andy looked like he might laugh. “Ya think?”

“We’ll be back as fast as we can,” I said.

“You are coming back, right?”

I couldn’t blame him. Humanity had suffered a serious blow. Trust was now an issue. With Michelle injured, he must think us taking off and continuing on to Mexico without them would be easier. And it would. “We’ll be back, Andy. You have my word.”

“Good luck,” he said.

“We’re going to need it.”

First choice, which direction to head. Back the way we came seemed like a good call. At least, I remembered seeing plenty of abandoned vehicles. Whether there were keys or full tanks of gas was another matter.

“Know what? When we find a truck,” Dave said, “I’m driving.”

“You’re driving?” I said.

“When we were in Rochester, you smashed up at least two cars while we were together. And if I remember what Alley said, there was one or two before we hooked up. That’s four accidents in a day, bro. Way I see it, you crashed more cars than you killed zombies,” he said.

“Asshole,” I said.

And we walked.

The first car we reached, a hundred yards from the bus, had keys. “Don’t matter,” Charlene said. “Seven of us are not fitting inside that thing.”

She was right. “Let’s remember it’s here. We have to split into two groups, two different cars, we will.”

“An SUV will be best. Something where Michelle can lie down in back,” Dave said.

“I agree. Beggars sometimes can’t be choosers.”

Plumes of smoke rose and billowed in the sky no matter which direction you looked. Texas was no different than anywhere else we’d been. Everything was on fire everywhere. You could smell the smoke. Part of it made me feel reminiscent of campfires, toasting marshmallows, drinking beer, telling scary tales to the kids. Mostly, I imagined death, and dying and zombies. Hopelessness. That’s what those fires really represented. A complete hopelessness.

“It’s going to be hard to get back to normal,” I said.

“What bothers me is the zombies,” Dave said. “They’ve changed the game.”

“You mean with them learning?”

“Fuck, yeah,” Dave said. “Sorry, Char.”

She smiled.

I’d protected my kids from vulgar language. It was a different time then. The “F” word was just a word now.

“Do you think anyone is working on a cure or a solution,” she said.

“I’d like to think so, honey,” I said.

“But do you think so?” she said.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

The sun rose in the east. Only a few clouds slid across the sky. I shivered. It was much warmer this far south, the chill was not from the temperature. “I feel like we’re being watched.”

Dave tensed. “From which direction?”

“Not sure.”

“I can still see the bus,” Charlene said. “Think it’s Andy?”

“No.” I looked left, and right. Made it as casual as possible. I did not want anyone to think we were on to them. “Could just be me.”

Dave opened the door on a pickup truck. “Keys.”

“We could take that and the other car,” Charlene said.

“I don’t want Michelle in the bed of a pickup. She’ll be bounced around, and exposed to the elements,” I said.

“Could throw a mattress from the bus into the back,” Charlene said.

We could, actually. “Not a bad idea. Let’s check a few more vehicles. I’d still prefer something we could all ride in.”

“Seven people, with Michelle needing to lie down,” Charlene said.

“We’ve been walking for ten, fifteen minutes. Let’s give it a few more,” I said.

“Ten or fifteen minutes to us is going to feel like hours to them,” Andy said.

“Just another few minutes,” I said. “Besides, if we’re being followed, I don’t want to lead them back to the bus.”

“So you think someone is out there, for real?” Dave said.

“I didn’t see anything. I just, I…feel it.”

“Should we just be gallivanting down the middle of the road like this, then?” Dave said.

“I don’t want them to know that we know they’re out there,” I said.

“If they’re out there,” Charlene said.

“Trust me, something is out there, and they are watching us,” I said.

“There’s a van,” Dave said, pointing.

I looked for it. I have no idea why I envisioned a conversion van with a starburst painting on the side. What I saw was a white work van, a ladder on top. “It’s going to be filled with tools,” I said.

“Might not be a terrible thing, we could go through it to see what we want. Leave the rest on the road. Then we do like Charlene said. We pull a few mattresses from the bus. Throw in supplies. Might be a tight squeeze, but at least we shouldn’t have trouble fitting seven people inside.”