How could this have happened? Meredith was still in shock.
She uttered the words over and over in her head. In the rearview mirror, she watched the bodies of the infected sway in the taillights’ glow, like dancers in the street. The remaining headlight of the truck barely lit up the road in front of her. It felt like she was living in a nightmare.
Her brain was functioning several steps behind reality.
John can’t be dead. He can’t be.
She’d seen him just a few minutes ago, swinging his rifle, fighting the infected with as much vigor as the others. For all she knew, he was still back there, waiting for them at the side of the road. Dan must be mistaken.
Meredith swerved to the side of the road and parked. Quinn sobbed quietly next to her.
Meredith opened the cab window, unbuckled her seatbelt, and stuck her head out. “We need to go back! John’s still alive,” she screamed at Dan, as much to convince herself as to convince him. “He’s there, he’s waiting…”
“He isn’t, Meredith,” Dan said.
“I saw him, Meredith. He didn’t make it. They got him.” Tim crept across the truck bed. “It was my fault. One of them grabbed hold of his rifle, and he tried to hold onto it, but they pulled him over. I couldn’t catch him in time…”
“Are you sure he’s gone…?” she whispered.
Meredith stared from Dan to Tim. Both men nodded. She clenched her eyes shut, tears streaming down her face. Then she closed the window and buckled her seatbelt. Quinn leaned against her. The little girl cried silently.
Meredith dried her face with her shirt and shifted into drive.
The pickup rattled and groaned beneath her. She could still hear the distant moans of the infected, and she pictured them feasting on John. Feasting on the man she loved. Stop it, Meredith. If she envisioned the scene any longer, she’d lose it completely. She focused on driving, immersing her body in the task, trying to figure out the next turn.
Memories of John came rushing back.
They’d had a tumultuous year together, but over the past few days, they’d grown closer than they’d ever been. She recalled rescuing him from the furniture store, tending his wounds at the movie theater. The battle they’d had at her farm. They’d survived all of it together.
The thought that John had been taken away didn’t seem real. It was as if he’d magically appear next to her, ready to continue to Abbotsville.
She stared out the window, her brain barely able to process the surroundings.
A few times, she spotted creatures roaming in the grass in the setting sun, like animals that had been freed from captivity, grazing in the wild. In just a week, the world had passed from the governance of man to the oversight of the infected. Somehow she’d accepted that.
But how could she accept this?
Quinn had stopped crying, and she lay silently in Meredith’s lap, as if she’d expended the last of her strength. Meredith thought back to the chopper she’d seen, to the expression of hope on John’s face. They’d shared that hope together.
She couldn’t let it die with him. She needed to press on.
She gritted her teeth and drove. They’d already backtracked several miles. But Abbotsville wasn’t far. When they got there, they’d find help. She repeated that mantra in her head, pushing the pickup truck harder. She needed a goal. Something to take her mind off what had happened.
Soon she’d reached a cut-through road, and she veered down it, slowing just enough to make the turn. The tires keened as she changed direction. A few more houses flitted past.
Quinn sat up.
“Something’s wrong, Aunt Meredith,” she said, pointing at the console.
Meredith glanced at the dash. The truck was lit with the glow of emergency lights. Although Meredith didn’t understand all of them, one of them stuck out to her: “Check Engine.” Quinn was right.
“Crap. Not now,” she whispered.
The vehicle slowed. Meredith pumped the gas pedal, but nothing happened—the engine had ceased. She wrenched the steering wheel, barely muscling the vehicle onto the shoulder as it coasted to a stop.
All at once, the area was consumed by quiet. Without the hum of the motor, the landscape seemed deathly still. The truck’s lone headlight burned into the darkness. Meredith glanced at the side of the road, certain the shadows would reveal the dripping mouths of the creatures, but the landscape was dark and impossible to discern. The wind kicked up from behind them.
Meredith tried restarting the engine, but the key clicked uselessly in the ignition.
“Dammit,” she whispered.
“What are we going to do, Aunt Meredith?” Quinn stared at her with frightened eyes.
Meredith glanced at her companions in the truck bed, who were already aiming their guns at the dark fields.
“I don’t know, honey,” she said. “I just don’t know.”