Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

He climbed back into the rear seat of the overfull Humvee and pulled the door shut. He tried not to jostle Miranda. She had not slammed the door on him when they left the house by the reservoir earlier. That did not mean she had been friendly.

“Nothing?” Mike said to Doug, who sat across from him in the front seat. Mike popped the clutch into gear.

“Maybe. Probably.” Doug shrugged. “I don’t know. Connor didn’t see anything.”

“As long as it’s not a herd of zombies, I don’t care,” Mike answered.

“Anyway, we’re almost to Laurel Curve.” Doug consulted a map spread across his knees. “The road is less twisty after that.”

As they descended into another valley, the fog began to dissipate.

“Thank God,” Connor heard Seffie mutter from behind him. She was hunkered down in the cargo area, sharing the space with Delilah and what was left of their supplies. “This fog is creeping me out.”

The Humvee came to an abrupt stop. Connor turned forward. Just before the road dipped, it disappeared. In its place, twisted pieces of rebar jutted out from a jagged lip across all four lanes. In the distance, the road reappeared and curved before twisting out of sight.

For a moment they sat there, staring.

“Seffie, take the rear,” Doug said, his voice decisive. “Mike and Mario, watch the sides and stay close, all of you. Connor, you’re with me.” Doug opened his door, then added, “Keep Delilah quiet, Miri. She’ll start barking at a squirrel and get us killed.”

Everyone scrambled out. Connor looked up to Gabe, who had a better vantage point from his perch at the .50 cal gun.

“What can you see?”

Gabe shook his head. “We need a bridge.”

Connor followed Doug, his heart pounding with every step. The break in the fog made it possible to look over the divider and check out the abandoned cars. Abandoned, but not empty. The cars were filled with skeletons. There was something about them that Connor could not put his finger on, something not quite right.

“Doug, come look at this.”

And then he saw it. There were chunks of skull missing, or deep cuts and caved in bones. Some of the skeletons had no skulls at all.

“What is it?” Doug asked as he reached where Connor stood.

“Look there, in the blue car. Look at their heads.”

Doug’s lips pursed, as if he were tasting an idea he did not care for. “Lots of people killed themselves and their families rather than become zombies.”

Connor walked to the next car. “They didn’t usually beat little Suzie’s head in to do it. They used guns or pills, not bats and machetes.”

Doug swore softly under his breath. “Figuring this out is beyond our brief. C’mon.”

When they reached the edge a minute later, Connor couldn’t believe his eyes. The crater, hell, the ravine, was the length of a soccer pitch across and a third as deep. A melee of debris—fallen trees, smashed cars, boulders—littered the bottom. Rusted rebar that had once reinforced the concrete slabs of the pavement twined skyward from below their feet.

Doug whistled, long and low. “That’s no washout. Someone blew up the road.”

“The rebar’s rusted. This happened a while ago.”

Connor dropped to his knees and peered over the edge. The concrete slab they stood on jutted out into the air like a cartoon drawing. Wind and rain had washed out the earth beneath, creating a shadowy overhang below them.

“We need to back up,” he said as he rose. Looking down into the hole where the road should be sent an unpleasant shiver through him. “This slab is undermined. Our weight might break it free.”

Connor scanned the forest as they retreated. “We need to find a different route.”

“Ya think?”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Connor persisted. “The only thing blowing up the road stops is people in cars. Anyone, anything, on foot, can just go around.”

“It’s working on us,” Doug said as he squatted and opened his map on the ground in front of him. Without looking up, he raised his voice slightly and said, “Miri, why are you and Delilah not in the Humvee?”

Connor turned around. Sure enough, Miranda approached. A few feet behind her, Delilah paused to sniff as she followed.

“I had to see.”

“Don’t go any farther,” Connor cautioned. “The earth is washed out underneath.”

Miranda kept her face impassive as he spoke, but she could not hide the spark of pain in her eyes. She stopped next to Doug and leaned forward, as if she might be able to peer over the lip from this distance.

“Jesus,” she said.

“Still just Doug,” Doug quipped.

Connor watched her grin until she looked his way.

“Did you see the bodies in the cars?” she asked Doug.

Doug nodded without looking up. “Yeah.”

“That’s not a good sign.”

“None of it is a good sign,” Doug agreed. “But there’s nothing to do for it. We pay attention and work the problem in front of us.”

Miranda nodded, then looked at Connor. “Did you see anything else?”

Connor shook his head no, thinking of his close call with the trap. Now he was a liar, too, like all the other men Miranda had ever trusted.

“We backtrack to here and take Glenwood Drive,” Doug said. He nudged Delilah’s nose away from the map as he folded it, then stood and held it for them to see. “It goes all the way into Scott’s Valley. We can get back onto the highway from there.”

Miranda frowned as she studied the map. “That’s mostly two-lane mountain roads.”

“It’s the least amount of backtracking. The next place we can get through is back here, at Summit.” Doug jabbed at another point on the map. “That looks like a smaller road.”

Connor scoured the twisting green lines of the map. “A small road like that might be gone by now. The first route is more direct.”

Miranda looked at Doug, then shrugged.

Doug grinned and nodded.

Decision made.

A spike of jealousy pierced Connor as he watched their silent conferral. Doug got Miranda in a way he feared he never would. Doug always knew what she needed—what to say and how to say it—while he stumbled in the dark, kicking land mines. They turned and walked purposefully to the Humvee, so smoothly they might as well have been one person. They even made the same knickering sound to call the dog.

“I’m jealous of a priest,” Connor muttered as he started after them. “Fucking hell.”

Fog snaked down the hillside as Doug motioned everyone to the Humvee. Connor glanced back and saw Delilah sniffing and pawing where the side of the road and jagged lip of broken concrete and rebar met.

A tingle of alarm scraped against Connor’s brain. Delilah was not always as quiet as they might like, but she was otherwise obedient to a fault.

“Come on, Delilah. Let’s go.”

Delilah didn’t budge. The fur along her spine bristled. Her lips began to twitch into a snarl, and a low growl rumbled in her chest. Connor looked across the blown-out road again, fear mingling with an adrenaline rush. Wisps of fog slipped past the dog.

“Delilah,” he said, more stern this time. “Come.”

Delilah ignored him. She crouched, as if ready to spring.

Connor walked quickly, praying the road did not collapse. Where the hell are they, he thought, scanning the trees on either side of the road, but the fog between them got thicker by the second. Two steps away from the dog, he heard noises. Scrabbling sounds, like a small animal shaking a bush as it passed by.

His finger alongside the trigger of the assault rifle itched as Connor grabbed Delilah’s collar with his other hand.

“Goddammit, dog. Come on!”

Delilah began to bark. Five feet in front of her, a wasted hand snaked over the lip of the road and gripped the twisted rebar.

Connor looked at the grasping hand in horror, then down at his feet.

They were under the road.

Behind him, Miranda whistled for Delilah. Connor ran into the fog toward her voice.

“We have to move,” he shouted. “They’re under the road! We have to move now!”

“Connor, where are you?”

Connor ran toward Miranda’s voice. Delilah flashed past him. He heard doors bang open as Miranda came into view. He could see the Humvee now, see his comrades scrambling inside.

“They’re under the road!”

“What?”

The moans began.

The Humvee was already moving when Connor jumped in after Miranda. He was behind the front passenger seat this time, near the center divider. Was that movement he saw in the abandoned cars on the other side or was his mind playing paranoid tricks?

“Where are they?” Mario asked as he grabbed Delilah’s snout to stop her barking.

“They’re under the road,” Connor answered. “It was a ledge by the missing part, but we couldn’t really see under it.”

“It’s a mile to the turn, so look sharp! We can’t miss it,” Doug said from the front seat.

“You were over there for ten minutes,” said Seffie. “Why did it take so long