Five

    “You don’t know that. She could have made it out. You told her to just run; maybe she didn’t stop.”

            The first two hours of the drive had been nothing but Brittany trying to assure me about the possible survival of the five who had not made it onto the bus. I had finally gotten into the rhythm of driving the big contraption, but knew that I was going way under the speed limit. We were on the same back road that we took on the way to Perrysburg. It was the only route that I knew and with no cell phones or GPS to guide me, it was really our only option.

            “Look at the nine that you did get out. We may not be home yet, but we are safe; safe because of you,” continued my best friend.

            The sun was beginning to rise. It filled the morning sky with shades of orange and red. It painted a picture across the gray dashboard of the bus as I drove, lines like fire spreading across the material. My hands were hurting from gripping the wheel so tight and my right leg stung from having to sit awkwardly at the edge of the seat since I didn’t know how to move it forward. They never taught how to work different escape vehicles in driver’s ed.

            “No,” I finally said. “We would have never made it out had Julissa not stepped forward. And now she’s not here.”

            John and Frank hadn’t made it either. They had wordlessly taken the initiative to hold the door so that a manic Rudolph could not come after us. In high school, they had been so cocky and dramatic, so  idiotic and unpleasant. Their final acts had been spontaneous and out of character, but so appreciated and valiant. Kayla and Sarah didn’t make it either. Although I had not witnessed the exact act that had made them fall behind, they had still been key figures in the past four days who had been at my side through all that had happened.

            “Don’t let this change you.”

            Her voice had been soft, but the words had reached my ears in a harsh, loud echo. I stepped down on the brakes, halting the bus in the most careless way. I turned to look at Brittany who had been sitting in the first seat nearest the door.

            “What did you say?” I murmured in disbelief.

            Brittany’s eyes widened a bit. She sat up straight. “Audrey, I meant "”

            “I saw my brother shot and killed. I was abducted alongside kids that I had judged for the one year that I knew them. My first moment with a man had been taken from me in the most volatile way. And now five of my fellow peers are gone because I left them behind. How can that not change me? How can that not change you?” I breathed, my eyes turning red with unshed tears.

            And then they fell, tiny beads of salty water pushing over my eyelashes and crashing down over my unclean cheeks. Noises came from my throat that sounded like a mixture of choking and high-pitched groans. My chest heaved. Brittany instantly stood and let my head fall against her stomach as I released my pain. She stroked my hair with her long slender fingers, hushing me gently. Those who had been sleeping were now awake and silently watching me cry. I could feel all of their eyes boring down on me. Despite what had happened to each of us individually, we could still find enough sympathy left in our bodies to feel for another person.

            “I understand, I do,” Brittany said. “I just meant that none of it was your fault. You can’t carry this burden.”

            I pulled back and looked up at her with tear-stained cheeks. “I asked for this responsibility when it was my plan that caused five people to be left behind. So now it is my responsibility to get us nine to safety and find help for those who didn’t make it, and yet its been two hours since we got away and I haven’t seen a damn car on this road.”

            “Maybe we should try finding a main road,” Andrew spoke. “Forget about backtracking the way we came and just find someone, anyone.”

            Andrew Kahn had an interesting story. He was fifteen-years old, and although he had never been involved in high school sports, he had somehow weaseled his way into that crowd, having seemingly gained popularity overnight. His father was Pakistani while his mother was an American soldier, thus leaving Andrew tall and skinny with light brown skin and big brown eyes. His parents had met at the very beginning of the War on Terror eighteen years ago. Rumors were that Andrew’s mother had gotten his father over illegally, but it was a topic that the boy kept very quiet.

            “I agree,” Destiny added. “I’m hungry and we’ve been wearing these same clothes for days.”

            It would seem fitting that Destiny and Andrew would be an item. They both came from less desirable family situations and held similar goals…or lack thereof. Destiny was fourteen, a friend of my sisters. They had met through cheerleading tryouts before the school year. My sister was a flyer and had liked some of Destiny’s routines. I had never been much of a fan, however, because I felt that Destiny had played a big role in my sister’s mental and intellectual decline.

            “I’ll drive,” Brittany offered.

            I nodded, wiping my cheeks as I stood. My vision was fogged, but I could still see seven sets of eyes staring back at me. My sister was sitting in the seat behind where Brittany had been. She looked up at me with her big blue eyes and slowly slid over, patting the empty space next to her. I wordlessly sat beside her. My body felt so conflicted. Part of me wanted to sleep while the other half felt the need to stay awake and alert. I guess paranoia was beginning to mix in with the exhaustion that I was feeling. My eyelids were growing heavy and my eyes began to burn.

            I’m not sure how long Brittany continued to drive before she found a road that led to a highway. I had been drifting in and out of sleep since moving seats. Brittany saw a sign for New York City. We were about one hundred miles from the city, which meant that a police station would surely be nearby. The road Brittany turned on had been hidden between a section of trees. We emerged near a stoplight before turning onto a circled onramp. As Brittany slowly drove, we noticed a car pulled over into the shoulder. The driver’s door was wide open and there was no person nearby. My sister and I exchanged curious looks before Brittany pulled onto the highway.

            Brittany accelerated. A low layer of fog drifted along the seemingly empty highway. If my calculations were correct, then today would have been a Wednesday and with the sun having risen an hour or two ago then the road should have been covered with speeding cars on their way to work. But instead, we were met with an empty highway, free to speed along as fast as we wanted.

            “This doesn’t seem right,” I heard Brittany murmur under her breath.

            It wasn’t long before her apprehensions were confirmed. I leaned into the aisle so that I could get a clear view of the highway in front of us. At first glance, it just looked like a bad traffic jam, but upon further investigation, we noted how the cars were void of people, bumper to bumper, and crossing into other lanes.

            “What the hell?” cried Brandon as he stood from in the back.

            Brittany came to a compete stop so that we could take in the scene before us. Also, there was no way she would be able to get a bus through all of the seemingly abandoned cars. We were stuck.

            “Maybe there was another fog thing like the one that happened a few years back in Texas with the one-hundred-and-forty car pile up,” Toner said as he walked down the aisle of the bus.

            “See if there’s anything on the radio,” Harry suggested.

            Brittany pressed the FM button and turned the volume dial. A loud, ear shattering noise came through the speakers. We all winced, clasping our hands over our ears and bowing our heads. Brittany quickly turned the radio off.

            “There’s no way to drive through this,” my best friend sighed.

            “Where’s all the police and ambulances? Where’s the fire trucks?” Destiny wondered, voicing all of our thoughts.

            “You’ll have to back down the highway and go back to the onramp. We will either have to find a different route or just go back to the road we were on,” I sighed.

            “You can’t drive backwards on a highway,” Destiny somewhat scoffed.

            “Either way we will need gas,” stated Brittany as she nodded to the dashboard. We were riding on less than a quarter tank of gas.

            “There was a gas station on the back road we took, the one Rudolph stopped at,” I said.

            “Alright, let’s just go there. We could at least make a phone call and talk to the owner. This is exhausting and I just want to go home,” Brittany said.

            I felt bad by her last comment. Her home was Texas, not with me at West Point. Her comment could have been a general statement, but I couldn’t help but feel as though I had let her down, that she somewhat hated me for what had happened to her because she had been visiting me at that time and was therefore trusting me with her care. I was surprised that she was even talking to me still.

            Brittany craned her neck so that she could see behind her as she backed the bus up. We moved slow and swerved a bit as she struggled to steer the wheel in reverse. She eventually got the bus turned around. We again passed a few vehicles that seemed to have been abandoned. This whole event just seemed too weird, bizarre to the point where I wondered whether or not it was actually happening. What had occurred in the last six days that had made the world seem so void of people? Where was the search parties and check points? How had we gone so far without no even seeing just one person?

            My best friend drove back up the on-ramp and turned again at the light. She made her way back through the sector of trees and once again down the old beaten path. One by one the trees grew familiar and I knew that we would be stumbling across the gas station at any moment. I kept my eyes open for the small sign that marked where the gas station was. We had passed it briefly in the dark, but I remember it being small and easily overlooked, which made me question why it was located there in the first place.

            Brittany stopped along the road in front of the gas station. She let the bus idle as we looked through the windows at what looked like a small family owned gas station. There were only four gas pumps, two of which currently had cars parked in front of them. One was a peach colored Mercury Mystique and another a hunter green Buick LeSabre. Again, both were abandoned. There was one more car parked to the left of the building. It was a large white van with no windows. It made me feel uneasy.

            “Looks kind of sketch,” muttered my sister.

            “I don’t even think anyone is here,” added Brandon.

            “We should still go in, still fill up the bus,” I stated.

            Brittany began looking around the bus, opening the glove box and cleaning out the cup holders. “Hey, look,” she said, holding up a single key on a key ring. Of course, the key could would still be on the bus.

            “Do you think you could back up the bus to one of the gas pumps?” I wondered.

            “I can try,” Brittany said.

            “Let me fix the wires first,” Andrew insisted. “Since we have the key, it would be better to use that then rely on some busted wires.”

            And then stillness ensued. No one seemed to want to move. I looked around. “What are you all waiting for?” I asked.

            “I think they are waiting for you to tell them what to do,” Brittany said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. She had spun around in the big driver’s seat so that her back was to the wheel and her knees where pressed against the back of the seat. She looked even more petite sitting in the seat like that.

            “Why? Since when did I become the leader?” I somewhat huffed.

            “Since you saved our lives,” Hannah said, softly.

            I sighed. They were words that I didn’t want to hear, words that I refused to accept as actions that I had performed. I looked at all of their faces. They were looking back at me with little to no emotion, but it was the anticipation and fear in their eyes that gave them away.

            I sighed once more. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll stay here with Brittany and Andrew as we work on fixing and filling up the bus. The rest of you go inside, see if you can find anyone. Maybe go to the bathroom if you need to and grab something to eat. If you find someone just send them out. I’ll talk to them.”

            It was a plan that seemed to resonate well with the others for when Brittany opened the bus doors, the six of them went running out. They stretched, cracking their rusty limbs and taking in the brown grass beneath their feet. They then headed for the gas station. Brittany and I sat in silence as Andrew rolled onto his back and began fiddling with the wires under the dashboard. After a few muffled swears, he slid back out.

            “There,” he said, rubbing his hands against his shirt. “It’s not perfect, but it should hold.”

            Andrew exited the bus as well and joined the others in the gas station. Brittany took her spot at the driver’s seat and I kept my eyes out the window so that I could direct her to a gas pump. She drove forward a bit before turning the wheel and backing up.

            “A little to the right, Britt,” I said, waving my hand.

            Brittany was nervous, I could tell by the way she shifted her foot from the gas peddle to the brake peddle repeatedly, the bus moving backwards in jerky movements that threatened to make me sick. She was finally able to pull back far enough for the gas pump to reach the back of the bus.

            “You go in and see what they are doing. I’ll fill the bus up,” insisted Brittany.

            I nodded. “There’s a “pay inside” option. Just use that and I’ll talk to the store clerk inside. Do you want anything?”

            “Maybe just a Snickers and a tea,” she said with a smile, which I found myself only half able to return.

I left my best friend by the gas pump and crossed the blacktop heading towards the glass swinging doors of the gas station. As I neared the building, I could see a muddled handprint on the side of the white van. I paused for a moment, taking in the brownish color. It looked like old blood. I figured it was just another tacky decal that some people get on their cars like the faux bullet holes.

            My mouth dropped upon entering the building. I questioned whether or not this had been the state Jorge and them had left it in when we had stopped here a few days prior. The place looked disgusting, food and merchandise thrown to the ground. A few shelves had been knocked into each other and a foul smell made my noise scrunch up in disgust.

            “Please tell me you didn’t do this?” I winced.

            Toner and Andrew looked up at me from where they had been crouched near a pile of candy. Their arms were pressed to their chests where they held numerous candy bars, bottles of soda, and I even saw a few packs of cigarettes stashed under Andrew’s armpits.

            “Ever hear of bags, boys?” I also added.

            “It was like this when we got in here,” Andrew shrugged. “No one is in here.”

            “Yeah, free stuff!” cheered Toner.

            I looked to see what the others were doing. As predicted, Lainey was hovering over People and Ok! magazines. She had always been the type to live in the worlds of celebrities, basking in their drama instead of dealing with her own. Hannah was walking along the cold section, her feet delicately stepping between the larger chunks of glass that had been broken from the freezer doors. Harry and Destiny seemed to be in their own worlds as they aimlessly wandered down the clearer aisles. Brandon was looking over some maps and tourist pamphlets.

            “This one says Milford, Pennsylvania,” he said. “So this must have been one of those travel stops just along the Pennsylvania/New York boarder.”

            “Where is everyone?” Destiny questioned.

            “This place looks like it got robbed. I wonder if that’s where the owner went, to get the police?” Harry piped in.

            “If he physically went to get the police instead of making a phone call, and the police didn’t even respond to the hundred-car pile-up on the highway, then something really bad had to have happened for them not to be anywhere else,” retorted Brandon.

            “It could have been another terrorist attack,” mumbled Harry. “Today is September eleventh and we are less than one-hundred miles from New York City.”

            It made sense, but no one wanted to voice that. No one wanted to say how obvious it was that something so violent that happened that it outshined the vanishing of fourteen teenagers, or was more important that a multi-vehicle car accident that blocked traffic on a highway.

            “Maybe it was the apocalypse,” Destiny said.

            “Impossible. Brittany is Catholic. She would have been gone by now,” I muttered.

            “And I’m Baptist,” Hannah added, meekly.

            I left the others to toss about the idea of a possible apocalypse. I walked up behind my sister. “Really?” I questioned in disbelief.

            Lainey jumped, dropping the magazine at her feet. She scowled a bit when she saw it was me and simply brushed a loose strand of bright blonde hair from across her face. For a fourteen-year-old, she had dyed her hair more than most woman do in a lifetime.

            “Just catching up on what I missed,” she muttered. She then went for a rack of souvenir clothing that was half tilted against the magazine stand. “Pink or blue?”

            She held both “I Love Pennsylvania” hoodies into the air. They were both too big for her boney frame, and knowing her she would let one side hang off of her shoulder so that her bra strap would show. Her current interests were in the Bohemian chic fashion that seemed to be spreading across Hollywood faster than an infection.

            “Why bother asking? You know I hate pink,” I rolled my eyes.

            “Pink it is!” she cried, carelessly dropping the baby blue hoodie to the ground.

            My sister grabbed a pair of black Pennsylvania shorts, as well, before joining Destiny in the far corner of the store. I looked down at my own attire. I brushed over the blood that had poured through my jeans. My purple sweater was torn along the sleeve. I looked at the travel clothes and sports attire that the small gas station had in stock. I was able to find a red tank top, albeit one size too small, and some black sweats that read “Milford est. 1796.” The bathroom was directly to my right and I found myself craving the privacy that it held.

            My fingers gripped the gray speckled countertop as I looked down. The tank top and sweat pants sat bunched together to the right of the sink. This was to be the first moment that I would have actually looked at myself in the mirror and I was terrified of what I would see. Opening my eyes was difficult. My lids felt a heaviness that was harder to lift than the kind that was brought by tiredness. And the sight that stood before me was no better.

            I let out a small whimper at my appearance. The heavy eyeliner and mascara that I was known for wearing was mostly gone, a few black streaks lingering under my eyelids. There was a harsh greenish bruise along the right side of my neck from when Jorge had grabbed me, and the raw skin around our wrists from where the zip ties had been before we all took turns chewing them off on the bus was bright pink. I regretting grabbing a tank top at that point but found myself desperately wanting out of these clothes and willing to change into just about anything.

            The tank top was tight, and having a large chest didn’t help. I pulled the top up so that my chest wasn’t as visible. I had been raised to dress modestly, but even that hadn’t warded off evil. I pulled my curls into a messy bun and fixed the smudges of my make up. I started at myself a little bit longer. No amount of water was able to wash away the pain that still clung to me like crusted mud.

            I turned off the water and threw my old clothes into the metal trash bin. As I turned for the door, something caught my eye. The floor was made of a gray bumpy stone tile, making the bathroom look more like a prison cell than anything. But across the floor in the very last stall was a pool of dark liquid. I had assumed that the smell had either come from a clogged toilet or some aftermath left behind by whoever had caused the mess outside. But as I slowly walked towards the far stall, it became evident by the copper smell that it had not been from a mess most commonly found in gas station bathrooms.

            I swallowed, my hand shaking as I reached out. I pushed the door back and it went swinging against the wall with a loud clatter that made me jump. There was no one in there, much to my surprise. There had been enough blood that I assumed there would have been a body left over from the robbery. Instead, there was just a pool of blood, most on the ground but some splatters across the white porcelain toilet. I grimaced and covered my noise, wondering if someone had had the misfortune of unexpectedly getting their period or even suffering from a miscarriage.

            Not wanting the smell to linger on my new clothes, I quickly walked out of the bathroom, bumping into Harry on my way. He had been standing near the aisle just outside the bathroom doors, the aisle across from the clothes where all of the snack food was.

            “Hey, Harry,” I stammered, trying to keep calm.

            The scrawny boy looked up at me with a petrified look. “I don’t think we should have stopped here,” he mumbled, face white. “Something’s not right.”

            I was cautious not to say anything that would reveal my own suspicions and intensify his. “We’ll leave soon. Did you get something to eat?” I asked, my motherly instincts beginning to kick in. Being the oldest had not only made me a natural " and somewhat reluctant " leader, but also very maternal when it came to those younger than me.

            “No,” he shook his head. “No one is here. That would be stealing.”

            I couldn’t help but let a small smile break through because of his innocence. I walked to the front counter where the register was. I reached across and pressed down on the printer so that a long strip of blank receipt paper fed through. I grabbed a pen, shaking it a few times to get it to work. At the top of the receipt I wrote, “We owe you,” followed by my home phone number.

            “Take what you want,” I called across the aisle to Harry. “I’ll document everything here.”

            Harry seemed reluctant at first, but eventually settled on a lemonade and a large bag of raisins. I wrote both things down on the receipt paper. “Is that it?” I asked.

            Harry nodded. I then wrote down what my sister and I had taken for clothes and as the others left the gas station to get back on the bus, I wrote down every item that was in their arms. I scowled at the massive amount of junk food that Toner and Andrew had settled on, even raising my eyebrows at the hotdogs that were spinning in the heater at the far end of the counter in hopes they would settle on something fresh and not as bad as what was in their arms. But that hadn’t enticed them. It was the bottles of Gatorade, bags of Doritos, and bars of chocolate that had struck their fancy.

            Once the list had been completed and I made sure that everyone had gotten what they needed and were out of the gas station, I set the list on the counter near the register. I hadn’t watched where I was setting the pen down until I heard a light clatter on the floor. I knew that it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I felt weird just leaving the pen on the ground, as though I was adding to the mess that I knew would already take someone quite some time to clean up. I gripped the edge of the countertop and pulled myself up so that I could look over the edge at where the pen had fallen.

            The pen was nothing compared to what else was on the other side of the counter. I gagged, my stomach threatening to make friends with my throat. My green eyes widened. These horrible choking noises came from deep in my throat. There, lying on the ground in the most distorted and painful way, was the store clerk. He was laying on his back, both his wrists cocked backwards and the bones sticking from out of the rotting flesh. His face was frozen, his jaw broken open and both eyeballs hanging from their sockets.  His clothes had been torn, shredded and soiled with blood. And if that wasn’t enough to see, he then moved.

            A gurgle came from his neck and I saw blood jump forward as though he was trying to talk. His jaw clamped shut and the noises that were embittered sounds like static, like a broken washer or a dying radio. His body twitched and for once I was grateful that Mildred and the others had half starved us, otherwise I would thrown up anything inside me.

            I pushed off of the counter, almost falling backwards as my ankle wobbled. I hurriedly walked backwards out of the station. In that moment it was as though I had two left feet, my whole body paralyzed from what I had just witnessed. And to make it even more unbearable, a similar looking figure but with much more mobility came shuffling from the side of the building where the white van was.

            This figure had more of its insides still intact. He was tall. His hair had been matteted to his long forehead by dark blood. His lips were curled back to show his teeth clicking together. The sound that came from him was the same sound that was made when one clicks their tongue against the back of their throat, like they are trying to choke and talk at the same time. This man’s teeth were big but flat and dull from constantly clamping his jaw together. He walked like me, only his feet were actually twisted, but after he noticed my presence, his pace seemed to heighten. A second one, a woman, then rounded the corner and I finally turned, bolting for the bus.

            “Get in! Get inside!” I screamed.

            All attention was on me and once the two gargling creatures became visible to the others, all attention moved to them. A panic ensued. The kids pushed past each other, stumbling to board the bus first. I pushed them up the stairs and jumped in after them. Just as my second foot hit the step, Brittany pulled the bus doors shut and the creatures ran into them. The bodily fluids and slim on their faces pressed against the glass doors as they cried out and dug their dull nails into the window. Fresh blood mixed with the dry blood that stained their fingertips.

            “I can’t move!” Brittany suddenly screamed.

            The creatures were banging against the glass violently and I feared that if we just waited there they would break in. I moved Brittany from the driver’s seat and sat down. The bus rumbled to life and I pressed my foot heavily on the gas peddle. The two creatures twisted against the bus as I sped off. They fell on top of each other. There was no time to breath, no time to scream a quick cheer, because as I sped along the narrow road between the trees, I saw through the rear view mirror that those two had been the least of our worries.

            In a hastened pace unlike what we had just seen, three more creatures came running around the trees by the gas station and sped down the road. They were fast, their bodies nimble despite the amount of flesh and insides that they seemed to lack. Their eyes were void of life and yet so intent on taking ours.

            “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” my sister was screaming.

            I had no intention of doing so, despite the minor distance that was slowly being put between us and whatever those fast paced creatures had been. If my first instinct had been right, then what they were was something worth being far more afraid of than whatever we had endured in the past six days.

            “There’s no way,” I murmured.

            “It’s impossible,” Brandon said. “I’ve watched every movie known to mankind that stars those things. There is no way that they are actually real now!”

            “I don’t get it! What are you talking about? What are they!” cried Destiny.

            Brandon looked back at the pale faced girl. “That, my dear,” he stated. “Is what a genuine, real life zombie looks like. Guess we found out why finding us became America’s last resort.”