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  After stripping off his filthy clothes, Jeff splashed water on his face and body, unconcerned with the mess he was making, since they were leaving anyway.

  A few minutes later, after having found a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt that fit reasonably well, Jeff felt like a new man. The headache had subsided, and the scent of soap on his skin smelled good. When he walked down the steps, he was actually cheerful.

  When he hit the first floor, he spotted Megan sitting at the kitchen table facing away from him.

  “Where’s my breakfast, woman?” he demanded, lowering his voice with exaggerated irritation.

  When Megan ignored the snarky comment, Jeff shrugged and moved into the kitchen. “I guess I’ll just have to fix it myself.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re already shirking your womanly duties.”

  He found no breakfast food in the cabinets, though there were plenty of baking supplies. “Hey, Megan, you could bake me a cake. That might make up for no eggs and bacon laid out for breakfast.”

  He smiled and turned to her, wondering why she wasn’t laughing or tossing off a snide riposte. When Jeff saw that she was staring off into space, he moved slowly toward her.

  “Hello?” He snapped his fingers and waved his hand in front of her eyes. “Anyone home?” Megan finally looked at him. His demeanor immediately changed from annoyed to concerned.

  “Megan?”

  “They’re back.” Her voice was subdued.

  Jeff stared at her for a moment before moving toward one of the windows at the front of the house. Carefully bending the blinds to peek out, he scanned the street as he heard Megan’s voice drift over to him.

  “I wanted to see what the weather was like. I opened the front door and saw one of them. It was about a block away. I don’t think it saw me, but then I saw another moving around across the street. I went to shut the door…and...there was another. I’m not sure, maybe there were more…” Her voice trailed off, the monotone account becoming background noise as Jeff searched the street. He began counting the stiffs he saw on his fingers and had to stop when he realized there were too many.

  Megan stared at him as he came walking back to the kitchen. The spark he had seen in her eyes just a little while ago had dimmed, but Jeff could still see both the hope and the fear that had always been there. Any thoughts of renewing their argument about sticking around the neighborhood vanished completely.

  Jeff forced a smile to his lips. “Grab everything you can. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 14

  It had been a busy intersection at one time but had fallen silent over the past few weeks. The fires had long since died out, and only charred residue remained. Destruction ran in random patterns—one building wiped out, the one next door left undamaged.

  A Dodge Intrepid teetered precariously on a brick wall at the entrance of a convenience mart. Wind made it creak and sway on its perch. The store shelves beyond the wreck were ransacked. A few items remained, but everything of any value had been cleared out.

  The Quick-n-Go across the street was in far worse condition. Two of its gas pumps had been sheared off at their bases. The burnt-out husk of the vehicle responsible for the damage had come to a crunching stop at a concrete barrier housing a dumpster on the back side of the parking lot. One of its tires had blown out before it connected with the pumps as it jumped a ditch, and sparks from the undercarriage had ignited both the pumps and the vehicle’s gas tank. The resulting explosion had sent the corrugated metal roof above crashing down, where it slammed into several cars parked underneath, crushing them and the people inside. Billowing flames from the two squashed pumps caused a chain reaction, and the rest of the pumps had erupted into fireballs as well.

  All that remained was a few burnt-out vehicles and bits of human remains baked into the cement. The corpses were seared carrion for scavengers to pick over. The building’s contents were annihilated by the heat and pressure of the explosions. Glass and metal superheated and fused together, and the ceiling tiles collapsed on top of the mess, bubbling as they melted and turned into a black ash that created a fine patina over the entire mess. The outer frame of the building was all that remained standing, and it resembled the charred skeleton of some giant beast.

  The drugstore diagonal to the Quick-n-Go was mostly intact, though heaps of trash and blistered vehicles populated its parking lot. The building still looked new. It was made almost entirely of stone with a few faux windows running along its side. Only at the entrance facing the intersection were there any building materials besides granite. The glass doors were shattered, though the surrounding entryway, also made of glass, was still intact. The metal doorframes were bent and pressed inward, and small pebbles of glass lay scattered across the tile floor. The metal racks that once held copies of Auto Trader and real estate magazines were crushed flat on the floor, and shredded paper splattered with bloody footprints was strewn throughout the vestibule.

  A ladder truck from the Milfield Fire Department sat in the intersection, along with an Army vehicle known as a deuce and a half. There were also several local township police cruisers and a camouflaged Humvee with a Squad Automatic Weapon mounted on the roof. They had been parked around the exterior of the intersection, forming a barrier to traffic coming from all directions. An ambulance stood sentry inside the jury-rigged stronghold, its rear door hanging open with the remnants of medical supplies scattered on the ground, smashed and useless. The vehicles were all wrecks, torn and shattered. There were dents and scratches, flattened tires and burst gas tanks. Expended cartridges lay scattered across the pavement by the hundreds.

  Above the vehicles, a cable holding up the traffic signal units had snapped, and they had crashed into the fire truck. Shards of red, amber, and green glass lay scattered across the roadway. The culprit was a car that had slammed into a light pole at one of the corners. The pole had collapsed into the parking lot of a pizza delivery joint. A rusted-out old Cadillac now rested on top of the pole, its front tires slightly off the ground. There was a spider web of cracks radiating outward from the bloody spot on the windshield where the driver’s head had hit the glass.

  Scavengers had picked most of the scattered bones clean, and even the remnants of blood and tattered clothing had been washed away by rain or blown away in the wind. The sun had baked the rest of the gore into the pavement, but the area had been purged of most signs of the former human inhabitants. It was a dead zone.

  * * *

  In the distance, something shattered the persistent silence.

  It was a car engine, its roar reverberating off the buildings as it gunned and hesitated repeatedly. It grew louder and quieter in turn, the noise coming and going at random intervals.

  The roads surrounding the intersection were clogged with stalled and demolished vehicles. It was a maze, the navigation of which would challenge any driver, even at a snail’s pace.

  Jeff and Megan found freedom from their residential prison by plowing through a fenced-in yard at the edge of the subdivision and avoiding the vehicle blockade entirely. Their journey of less than a couple of miles afterward took thirty minutes and gave them a bitter taste of what the outside world now had to offer.

  Most of the vehicles they encountered were abandoned, with doors wide open and discarded suitcases strewn across the pavement. Others were smashed, telltale drag marks and trails of blood the only evidence as to what had happened to the owners. But some of the cars still had bodies inside.

  The corpses of the people who managed to stay locked in their vehicles were in bad shape. A month of summer heat and direct sunlight had taken its toll, bloating and warping them until they were unrecognizable. In some cases, the bodies had ruptured and splattered their rotten contents on windows, hiding the most gruesome aspects of their demise.

  But the worst was the little girl.

  She was locked in a car seat in the back of an Altima on the side of the road. At first Jeff thought she was just like the rest of the cor
pses until he saw her arm twitch. As he looked closer, her eyes opened. When she twisted around to look at him, Jeff nearly screamed. Her skin had gone runny, having melted away from her face and arms in thick, gluey globs. The blistered remains of her visage made her eyes look wide and haunted and her grin demonic. Jeff drove on, unsure whether his companion had seen the girl. Megan never said a word.

  The blue minivan made agonizingly slow progress toward the intersection, braking then shifting into reverse on several occasions as it moved past one obstacle or maneuvered around another. A few solitary plague-ravaged people limped into view from the houses and wooded areas surrounding the road but were scattered and could not keep up with the van, even at its creeping pace. When the Odyssey finally came to a halt a hundred yards from the intersection, Jeff and Megan paused to survey the destruction.

  “I think the junior high was one of those emergency shelters the National Guard opened up,” Megan said as they stared at the clog of military and police vehicles up ahead.

  After a few moments of silence, she looked at Jeff and realized he hadn’t heard her, or wasn’t paying attention. She nudged him with her elbow.

  “Huh? Oh, sorry. I was just…” Jeff waved a hand in front of them, showing a trace of the shock Megan knew was on her face as well.

  “I know. It’s hard to believe.” She looked back outside, trying to grasp what had become of all the shops and stores she remembered so well from her three years living in the area. Megan tried to blot out the thoughts, tried to focus. “I think we should check out the junior high.”

  Jeff looked off into the distance in the direction of the high school and junior high. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” He pointed above the buildings that lined the street. “See that smoke? I don’t like the looks of it.”

  Megan scrunched up her face until she caught sight of the smoke curling toward the sky. “I think that’s too far away. It’s coming from the city or at least a suburb closer to it than Milfield. The junior high is just a mile down the road.”

  Jeff did not respond immediately. He studied the fire truck and other vehicles at the intersection. His eyes narrowed with understanding, and he turned to Megan.

  “I really don’t think we should go that way.” He raised his hand to stall her protest and pointed to the vehicles in front of them. “See that fire truck?”

  Megan’s expression told him how stupid she thought his question was.

  “I mean do you see how it’s set up?” Jeff paused as she looked out at the truck once again and waited until she nodded. “I think there was some sort of last stand here.”

  He let his words sink in as they both studied the fire truck. It was blocking the road leading to the junior high and beyond, where the interstate that circled Cincinnati ran. Downtown was a mere twenty-five miles from where they sat.

  Megan’s face was a picture of conflicting emotions as she let the ramifications of Jeff’s words sink in. The city had been ground zero for the first viral outbreaks in the region. From there it spiraled outward, attacking the suburban landscape in random spots as it built momentum and grew out of the control of the civil and military authorities trying to contain its progress.

  Jeff could see the sparkle of tears in Megan’s eyes even as she tried to blink them away. His heart sank, watching her struggle with the reality that it was unlikely anyone they knew was a survivor. The shelter had, in all probability, been overrun weeks ago.

  He sat in silence, unsure of what to say that might offer her comfort. As he stared down at the steering wheel, he tried to clear his mind and focus on the magnitude of what they were facing.

  “So where do we go from here?”

  Jeff glanced over at Megan, but she was still looking down the road. She rubbed at her eyes fiercely with the back of her hand and sniffled, but otherwise showed no further emotion as she asked the question.

  “I think we should head out into the country. We might have a fighting chance out there,” he suggested without hesitation. They needed to get as far away from the city as possible.

  “Yeah,” Megan whispered and sniffled again. After a moment, she grimaced and shook her head. “Probably a bunch of gun nuts and survivalists out there, but what other choice do we have?”

  “Maybe, but they’re the ones who have the best shot of making it through something like this,...not a couple of suburban dipwads like us.”

  Megan tilted her head and stared at him. She could see a gleam in his eyes when he winked at her. She gave him a halfhearted laugh in response.

  “Okay then, Mister Dipwad, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Jeff grinned, relieved that Megan seemed to be handling things well enough to toss a bit of abuse his way.

  Lifting his foot off the brake, he let the van roll forward and scanned the immediate buildings. They had been sitting near the intersection for a couple of minutes and had seen no movement thus far. His eyes moved from building to building, settling on the drugstore, where they stayed focused for several seconds. A look of grim concentration came over Jeff’s face.

  “What?” Megan asked as they slowed to a stop again. She stiffened, fearing an attack, and swiveled around to see what he was staring at with such intensity. When all she saw was the drugstore and not much else, she relaxed and turned back to Jeff to await his explanation.

  “I think…” He paused and seemed to confirm something with himself. “Yep, definitely.”

  “What, for Chrissakes?” Megan blurted out.

  Jeff snorted at the frustration in his companion’s voice. He nodded at the drugstore. “Before we go, I think we should do a little shopping.”

  Chapter 15

  Jeff was grateful for the sunlight that crept inside the entrance to the drugstore, even though much of it was blotted out by the minivan, which was parked directly in front of the demolished front doors, blocking anything from getting past them from outside. Unfortunately, the light only illuminated a short distance into the building. He could see another glimmer of light at the back, where the pharmacy drive-through window was, but much of the cavernous store was buried in a deep layer of darkness.

  He gave one look back toward the van where Megan sat behind the wheel and sighed. It had taken some work to convince her to let him check out the drugstore, but in the end, she had agreed, knowing just as well as he did that they desperately needed supplies. She still refused to come inside, stating that he might be crazy but she wasn’t. Megan had gone so far as to give him ten minutes to get back to the van before she would leave without him. He thought she was joking until he saw the naked fear in her eyes. That was when he nodded and promised to be quick.

  Most of the aisles were still standing, although many of the contents were scattered on the floor. Makeup, candy, and overpriced DVDs covered the ground and had been trampled repeatedly. Jeff turned on the flashlight and swung it back and forth.

  To his left were the registers and photo development area. Much of the products hanging on the walls—film, batteries, more candy, magazines—were still there, untouched. He crept farther into the store, the rubber soles of his hiking boots squeaking as he skirted the piles of trash on the floor.

  He noticed congealed blood pooled between several aisles. Down one lane, it looked like a skirmish had occurred, with a jumble of bloody footprints layered on top of one another and thick ropy splatters of red sprayed against a display of vacuum cleaner bags and humidifiers. Several shelves in the area had collapsed.

  Jeff tried to detect any sounds that might hint of anyone still in residence in the drugstore, but he heard nothing except his own breathing. Gritting his teeth, he moved deeper into the gloom.

  He found an overturned shopping cart and righted it. Pushing it along, he moved through the more well stocked aisles, grabbing anything that looked even remotely useful.

  Jeff snatched up bandages, aspirin, allergy medicine, deodorant, hydrogen peroxide, razors, shaving cream, tampons (stifling a giggle as he did), and any
thing else within reach. He filled the metal cart and built up speed, the flashlight jammed in an armpit as he grabbed snacks and cases of soda. Unfortunately, there was no food of any real substance, but they had already collected quite a few canned goods from the house in which they had hidden the night before.

  He glanced at his watch: three more minutes before Megan started freaking out. He was still staring at the timepiece when the contents of a shelf next to his head crashed down on him.

  The flashlight clattered to the floor, and Jeff let out an involuntary squeal and dove forward. He thought he felt a hand touching his shoulder when several bags of chips and boxes of cookies fell on him. In his mad, blind dash, he slammed into another shelf and nearly sent it teetering over. He tried to keep his balance, but tripped on something between his feet and sprawled headlong, landing on palms and knees and then sliding across the floor.

  Quickly rolling over, he scooted backwards in a crab-like fashion, trying to get a fix on his location. The flashlight was still rolling, its light pointing away from him. Jeff moved his hand back and forth across the floor until he found a small cardboard box. He grabbed it, cocking his arm back, ready to launch it at anything that came forward in the darkness.

  He could hear something over the pounding of blood in his ears, but barely. It sounded like scurrying and scratching. Although there was no moaning, Jeff had learned not to rely on that as the only indicator that he was in the presence of a predator.

  His pupils dilated as he absorbed all the dim light available and looked out in front of him. He tried to scan for any looming shapes and saw none. After giving his breathing another thirty seconds to return to normal, he quietly stood and moved back to the shopping cart and fallen flashlight. Picking up the Maglite, he pointed it toward the shelf.