Famine: The Quiet Apocalypse Read online

  After I read the words and handed the paper to Sam, he searched Karen’s face for a moment and gestured to her. When her hands moved in response, he sighed and met my eyes. “I don’t see how we have a choice.”

  My anxiety asked how we knew she wasn’t lying, trying to foist a failing vehicle on us in an attempt to get one that worked. Hell, maybe she was working with them, trying to bait us into breaking down somewhere so we could be caught more easily. Why would they do that when they could have just shot us right here? Or in our sleep? They don’t need to lure us out of the building to kill us.

  My rational mind saw the sincerity in her eyes, wide and blue in her pale face, a face that might be pretty if she weren’t dressed up like some kind of dummy for football players to practice shoving around the field. There was determination in her face, and fear. Worst of all was the hope.

  She saw in us a chance to have her suffering end, and the raw, naked hope blazing from her was palpable. It frightened me almost as much as the thought of roving bands of cannibals outside (or inside) the hotel. The pressure of those expectations was paralyzing. If we succeeded, we’d save so many lives, but if we failed, all that blood would be on our hands.

  I met Sam’s eyes, and with great effort tamped down the panic threatening to overwhelm me. “Well...let’s do this thing.”

  14: Cannibals

  After we’d both gathered our stuff from our respective rooms, we headed through the dark hallway to the parking lot. A jacked up black pickup truck stood next to our little car, dwarfing it. Sam squeezed my shoulder before he headed for the car to pull the rest of our belongings out of it.

  Karen wrote something in the notepad and showed it to me. Moon is bright. Drive without lights. Take all your extra fuel, I won’t need it as much as you. Godspeed. Again, sorry for trying to kill you.

  I nodded, and on impulse I reached out and hugged her. For a moment she stiffened, then she relaxed into the embrace. When I stepped back, there were tears running down her face, wet tracks shining in the moonlight. I took the notepad and wrote a few words as Sam’s footsteps crunched toward the snow toward us. Don’t give up. In a few days, things could get better.

  Karen smiled through her tears. “Good luck.” The words were raspy, made by a voice not used to verbal speech.

  Sam reached us, and held his hand out with the keys in his palm. Karen took them, and for a moment the three of us and Honey Badger all stood there, looking at each other awkwardly. There wasn’t much else to say. We all knew how much we were risking by trusting each other. My throat ached something fierce, and if it weren’t for the adrenaline surging through me at the prospect of driving in the dark, I knew I would have been exhausted.

  Far in the distance, the near-inaudible rumble of an engine reached my ears. I turned to Sam, and he nodded. “We have to go.” He gestured as he murmured the words. Karen clasped the car keys to her chest with one hand, and with the other she fished the key to the truck out of a pocket somewhere in her bulky clothing.

  “Come on. We have to go.” I followed him as he set out toward the truck. Just as I stepped around the back of it toward the passenger seat, I spared a glance back at the woman, who must be small under all that clothing. She waved a hand.

  Sam had already loaded our luggage and blankets in the narrow second row of seats. Our gasoline cans sat in the bed of the truck. I patted my seat and Honey Badger scrambled up, then when I pushed on her butt, she hopped into the back seat.

  I closed my door and sat for a moment staring at the dark wall of the hotel. Sam sat next to me with the keys in the ignition. “Sam, are we really doing this? Are we really trusting her?”

  “If you’d seen what I saw in that room, you’d have no doubt she’s telling the truth.” He reached forward and turned the key in the ignition.

  “She said we should keep the headlights off.”

  “Right.” He pulled the gearshift into reverse. The truck with its tall, rugged tires backed up smoothly, then took us across the snow-covered parking lot in a way the car could never have managed. The sun was gone. Only moonlight, cold and blue, illuminated our way across the parking lot and onto the service road.

  When Sam pulled the truck onto the highway, I saw he’d been right. Whether due to wind or other factors, the road here had a much thinner snow covering than the parking lot.

  “Sam.” I grasped his arm.

  “I see it.” The tire tracks, far more than just one truck, stretched away in front of us. “We’ll be okay.”

  “Will we?” I couldn’t shake the terrifying sensation that we were headed straight into danger, rather than away from it.

  “We just have to get past the city and we’ll be fine.”

  I swallowed hard, and resisted the urge to climb into the back with Honey Badger. It’s not like she would protect me if it came down to some kind of fight. “Okay.” A disturbing thought occurred to me. “Sam, what about when we go past wherever they got past the highway? They’ll be able to see our tracks.”

  “I know. We’ll just have to hope we make it far enough that we’re not worth following.”

  Resisting the urge to cry, I curled up in the corner of my seat and the truck door. This was just supposed to be a road trip. It was supposed to be drive there, find the egg, turn it off, come home. Isn’t that hard enough? Now we have to add cannibals, deaf ranchers desperately trying to save their families, and a relationship that unexpectedly went to the next level. I’m not ready for this. I can’t do this. I want to go home. I want to sit next to Sam with our backs on the bunker wall and look up at the stars while the breeze whispers in our ears.

  “Hey. Just hold it together for twelve more hours. We’re almost there.”

  “We can’t drive through the night. You’re exhausted.”

  Sam smiled wryly, the expression barely visible in the darkness. “Deidre, I’ve been in the military and I’ve run a farm. I can handle a couple of overnight missions. Don’t worry about me.” The smile faded. “Seems like it’s safer for you if I stay awake, anyway.”

  “No, it’s safer for me if I use my head and don’t try to touch someone having a violent nightmare.”

  By Sam’s grimace, it seemed I hadn’t made him feel any better. “Right.” I was too tired, and my nerves were too strung out for me to try and reassure him. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely over being mad at him after our little fight earlier.

  Our going was slow, as Sam had to both navigate in the dark, and try not to run off the road. A wide, moonlit vista spread out on either side of us. It was much brighter than I’d expected. The snow reflected a ton of light, and we were able to go a bit faster than if we’d been driving in the South with its pitch-black, tree-choked darkness.

  “Is that headlights?” I squinted through the mile plus separating us from the faint light behind us.

  “Deidre, do you want me to look or drive?”

  “Sorry.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and climbed into the back with Honey Badger, who started thumping her tail and nearly unseated me in her enthusiasm. “Hey, settle down or you’re going in the back.” I shoved some stuff onto the floor until I could sit on the bench and watch the lights behind us. “Maybe we should go faster.”

  “Not unless you want us in a ditch.”

  I sighed, but couldn’t argue. I watched until my eyes watered, my gaze fixed on the two tiny pinpricks of light far behind us. We’d passed into Casper proper, and the map rustled as Sam made sure we stayed on the right route.

  “What’re you doing?” I turned front to watch when Sam took an exit.

  “Taking the long way around. Maybe if we go along some backroads, they’re less likely to find us.”

  “Good idea.” As we plunged down into the streets and the deeper darkness between the buildings, the lights disappeared. At one point, when we reached a bare spot where the wind or warmth had exposed a bare section of asphalt, Sam turned from the track-rutted road to one covered in virgin snow. I climbed back into the front sea
t now that I couldn’t see anyone behind us.

  “We’re almost to the other side.” Sam reached across and grasped my hand in his, giving it a squeeze. “If we get back to the highway and the other vehicle is gone, we’ll turn the headlights on and see if we can squeeze any more speed out of this truck. You know, with any luck we’ll get there some time tomorrow.”

  “Then comes the hard part.”

  Just as Sam let my hand go, a bright light flashed in front of us. Both of Sam’s hands went to the wheel in a flash. His foot slammed on the brakes. I hadn’t put my seatbelt back on, so I slammed into the dashboard with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs. Powdery snow flew up in a cloud as the truck’s wheels locked and it slid to a stop.

  I coughed and pushed myself back into my seat, struggling for breath. As my eyes focused again, I squinted against the bright light. Two vehicles were parked directly in our path, facing us.

  My whole body went cold. “Do you think…”

  “Deidre, open the glove box. There’s a handgun inside. Give it to me.”

  My hands shook as I reached for the latch and let the little door fall open. “Sam…”

  “Just give me the gun, Deidre.”

  My hand closed on the cold metal and I passed it to him. As I raised my head, I could see two figures walking toward us. They were highlighted by the headlights of the trucks behind them. As my eyes adjusted to the brightness, others became visible. Men, all of them wearing heavy fur coats and strange headdresses made of antlers and wires, surrounded the trucks. The two walking toward us had long sticks in their hands, poles with knives bound to the ends.

  “Sam, what do we do? What if they’re cannibals? We have to go!”

  “We can’t. Look behind us.”

  When I turned around and saw the other trucks behind us, I thought I might be sick. “No, this can’t be happening. This can’t be real. Maybe Karen was wrong.”

  Sam’s hand closed over mine and tightened. “Karen wasn’t wrong, and this is very real. Just hang on. Let me talk.”

  As the two men reached our truck, they split up. One came to my side while the other went to Sam’s. When the one at my window knocked on the glass, I glanced at Sam in desperation as the swarthy face leered at me. I couldn’t tell if the red stuff smeared on his face was blood or paint.

  Sam gestured for me to wait, and rolled his window down by maybe half an inch. “Sir, we’re just passing through. We don’t intend to cause any trouble. Please let us pass.”

  The man’s head fell back as he guffawed. “Hear that?” This was yelled at his companions. “They won’t cause any trouble!”

  I cringed back against my seat as the other men, including the one at my window, joined in the laughter. That one tapped on the glass again, harder this time. I let out a whimper as I shrank back. In the back seat, Honey Badger went into a frenzy of barking, and her snarling nose stuck between the side of my seat and the truck’s wall. The man outside jumped back a step, then laughed again “Been a while since we had four-legged critter!” He put his sneering face right up to the glass, and Honey Badger’s fury doubled. She was positively livid, as she strained to force her body between my seat and the wall.

  “Let us pass.” Sam’s voice was cold, and raised to carry over the sound of the frenzied German Shepherd. “I’m not going to ask again.”

  The man at his window grinned a cold, chilling smile. “Get out the truck.”

  I watched, stomach twisting itself into a painful ball of nerves, as Sam rested the hand holding the gun on his thigh. “We wish to stay in the truck. Move aside.”

  The man outside the window snarled. I could barely hear his words over Honey Badger. “I don’t think so.” He nodded, and I shrieked at the sound of breaking glass. I dodged backward just as the end of a pole came through my window.

  “Deidre!” I couldn’t respond. Everything was chaos. An arm soon followed the pole, an arm with grasping hands on the end of it. The hands grabbed my shoulder, my hair, my neck. Honey Badger sank her teeth into the tattooed skin, and the man yelled.

  Bang. The sound of the gun going off inside the truck was unbearable. My ears rang as the whole world went quiet. Honey Badger released the arm, but it still had a grip on my arm.

  Sam yelled something. I couldn’t hear the words. Then the truck surged into motion, and the scene was burned into my eyelids. The man holding me was ripped away by the force of our momentum. More men were running toward us. Sam didn’t waver.

  I screamed as we plowed through their midst. There was blood on me. There was blood on the windshield. Blood everywhere, and somehow the world was managing to be silent and scream at me in the same instant. I was covered in pain and blood. There was a body on our windshield.

  Why is there a body on our windshield?

  Sam spun the steering wheel, and the body flopped over just long enough to give me a glimpse of the mangled face. Then the turn sent it flying off as we sped down a side street. Behind us, lights converged as the trucks entered the street.

  They know the city better than we do. We’ll never escape. They’ll see our tracks. We can’t get away.

  I held on for dear life as Sam took one turn, then another, each one threatening to end us spinning out in the snow. Gradually, with painful slowness, the other trucks fell behind.

  We turned a corner and hit a dead end. I clutched the handle of my door, panic squeezing my throat shut until I could barely breathe. “Sam!”

  But we were too late. One truck swung into the alley behind us, while another parked beyond it. “Sam, what do we do?”

  “I don’t know. Be quiet and let me think.”

  I shut my mouth with a snap, even as I twisted around to see one cannibal, then another, swing down from the bed of the truck and lope toward us. Spears raised, a gutteral sort of growl issued from their throats. Honey Badger went manic, barking and throwing herself against the back window. “Be quiet!” Sam roared at the dog, but she didn’t listen.

  “Sam…” I watched his face, unable to move. “Please.”

  Determination hardened his features and he threw the truck into reverse. “Hang on!”

  I squealed as he hit the accelerator and the truck leaped into motion, throwing me against the dashboard again. I screamed as the two men couldn’t get out of our way fast enough and Sam mowed them down until we ran over them like they were nothing more than speed bumps.

  A loud roar went up behind us, and more cannibals poured from both vehicles. Sam slammed the truck into drive and accelerated forward. “Sam. Sam, that’s a wall! Sam!” But just before we hit it, he yanked the steering wheel to the side. I screwed my eyes shut and waited for the impact. I waited for death.

  The impact came, all right, but death did not come with it. We ran straight through a garage door that was all but invisible in the darkness. I hung on for dear life as Sam pushed the accelerator down even further and we blazed through the empty bay to burst out through the door on the other side. The truck skidded into the road, pushing the mangled door in front of it, the tires squealing as it sought purchase in the snow-blanketed road. Just when I thought we’d be stuck, the two cannibal trucks came growling through the garage. The wheels caught on the asphalt and we tore forward.

  Sam wove through the dark roads while I hung on and tried in vain to see the alleys and streets he never seemed to miss. Every time, just as I was cringing and convinced we were going to die, he’d swing the truck into a sort of controlled slide and we’d turn onto another road. With painful slowness, we drew away from the cannibals once again, until it took a few seconds for us to see them behind us.

  When we managed to turn into an alley two streets away from where we’d last seen headlights, Sam threw the truck into park. “Out!”

  As one, we grabbed our backpacks and launched out of our respective doors. I didn’t wait to see if Honey Badger followed. We took off through the stinging air and the snow, plowing our way toward the yawning archway in front of us. Beyond
was darkness...darkness that would conceal us. We just had to run fast enough. I just had to ignore the stabbing pain in my ankle and the stickiness of the blood on my face. We couldn’t trip. We had to keep running.

  Sam grasped my arm and pulled me into a corridor. All I knew was we were in a warehouse. Pallets and boxes surrounded us, no more than looming shapes in the dark. We pounded along the concrete, my eyes straining to see anything.

  “Here!” He tugged, and I fell into him as he pushed a door open. The heavy metal slammed shut behind us. “Help me block it!” A flashlight clicked to life and he stuck it between his teeth as we both grabbed hold of a metal table and hauled it into place. Sam jumped up and slammed the sliding lock at the top into place, then crawled beneath the door and did the same at the bottom.