Judgment Day: Part 16

Molly climbed into the passenger seat, buckled herself in, then sat in silence while he played with the CB.

“Maybe we should call out?”

“I don’t want to tip our hand.”

“Tip our hand? Nobody will know where we are. We’re mobile.” She hit the side of the door and grabbed the mic. Before Daryl could react, she opened the channel and pressed the speaker to her lips, “One-Adam-Twelve, this is hot stuff and paranoid geek, last survivors of the apocalypse, come on back now.”

Static. Daryl watched Molly, wide-eyed, then glared down at the CB, then guiltily out the windows. Some strange, childlike part of him expected dozens of monsters to suddenly materialize out of the shadows, the alleys, from behind shrubs and cars, the eaves of buildings, the very rain itself.

“Anyone out there? Hello?” Molly said again, this time with a slight tremolo in her voice.

“Jesus,” Daryl took the speaker out of her hand and replaced it on its bracket, “We just listen, for now. Until we’re out of the city.”

She kept silent while he maneuvered the van out of the gas station and around the abandoned cars. The opposite side of the road was relatively clear of rush hour traffic, so he pulled into those lanes. Driving towards headlights was unnerving, even if the cars facing him weren’t moving. It went against the ingrained training of a lifetime, and took an unusual level of concentration just to keep from jumping everytime a pair of headlights became visible in the misting rain.

“So your house, then?” Molly asked, her hand clutching the side bar as she stared at the cars.

Daryl nodded. “See if anyone made it.”

“Do you really think there’s a chance that your friends survived?”

He shrugged, “Gotta check. Sure you don’t want to look in on your people?”

She looked down at her legs and shook her head.

“Don’t you want to pick anything up? Personal items?”

She shook her head again and he glanced over at her, the sad face that he’d been staring at for so many months was back.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. So we hit your house, then we get out of here, right? The city I mean?” She looked out at the cars, her eyes focusing on corpses sprawled along the side of the road. Her head moved to follow each one as they drove past. Daryl found himself doing the same thing.

“I mean,” she continued, “There’s a lot of cars without drivers. Do you think they…that they’re…?”

“Molly, you know what I know. We’ll check my house, grab some more supplies, then we’ll be well into the country by nightfall.”

The drive to his house was a little over six miles, but it took nearly an hour to make it through the crowded streets. The rain stayed steady, a grey day for the newly dead. There wasn’t a single sign of other survivors, just street after street full of the previous night’s rush hour traffic. Stores were open and empty. The commuters were forever traveling, forever frozen in their last acts. Corpses behind steering wheels, clutching gas pumps, grouped together at the bus stop, in line at the fast food joints. Lines of cars sitting blindly through green lights, a fender bender and two men slumped over their insurance papers, joggers, walkers. These was the living dead. A city that stopped one night, everything held in place. Was the final memory of Mankind going to be evening rush hour?

The sound of the rain on the van, and of the van itself, was oddly comforting. The dead world out there – the silence – was unnerving for a person who had spent every moment in the hustle and bustle. The death of the great machine was more unsettling than the bodies lying in the street. And now that he’d seen murder and death outside of the television screen, the sight of a row of abandoned vehicles caused him more fear than the site of a bloated corpse, unblinking in the rain. Did those abandoned cars mean there were more monsters out there? Stepping out of their cars and going… Going where?

Run, rabbit, run. He stepped on the gas when he could, notched the van up to a good speed on the shoulders and whenever there was a gap on the side streets. Getting out of the city was becoming a priority.

On a side street he used every day to weave his way to the Metro, the road was fairly clear. He zipped past a group of cars, then bounced back into his lane. But he slowed, letting the van roll to a stop at the top of a rise, and stared into his mirrors.

“What?” Molly spun around, gripping the edge of the seat.

He shook his head, “Too many abandoned cars back there.”

“What, here?”

“All the way here. I don’t think, I can’t…” he stared down at his hands. “Those people died back there.”

“What people? From the subway?” Molly asked.

“I just stood there.”

“You couldn’t have done anything.”

“But I did do something. After it killed that boy.”

“Daryl,” Molly put her hand on his shoulder.

“I can’t fight these things. I’ve never been in a fight.” He laughed, a sick desperate sound. He’d been in a fight now.

“You did okay last night.” Molly’s smile was warm, sincere. She tilted her head towards the back of the van, “We’ve got stuff, Mad Max. We can be okay, now.”

“I wanted to wake up and find everything back to normal.”

Molly smiled a bit wider, her hand moved up to his face and caressed him gently, “I wanted that when the emergency lights came on in the tunnel. Come on, boy, let’s go to your house, then get out of here.”

“There are an awful lot of abandoned cars, Molly.” He was still looking in his mirrors, fixed on headlights in the mist behind him.

“Maybe some people ran off. They could just as easily be like us, Daryl. Come on.” Her hand left his face, crossed over her breasts. She was serious now when he looked at her, nodding her head towards the road ahead. “What did you tell me last night? We’ll have time to freak out later, right? When we’re safe.”

“There has to be someone in authority left.” He said, slowly. “There’s always someone in authority. Bunkers under the White House. Things like that.”

She shrugged, “Then they’ll find us. But, until then, we have to get ourselves to safety.”

“I don’t know how to use them.”

“What?”

“The guns.” What was wrong with him? It was all settling in. He gripped the wheel. A lifetime passing him by, piling up, whispering in his ear. His 20’s thrown away to a machine that had been destroyed in a minute, blood on his hands. He had to hold on. Had to keep moving. But he was a few minutes from his house, and he didn’t want to find out anything bad. He didn’t want to know what had to be the truth. He didn’t want to see bodies of people he knew.

“Point and shoot, you said. Like in the movies.” Molly rapped her hand on the dashboard, “Let’s check out your place, get what we need and then get out of here. We can both have a breakdown tonight in a farmhouse somewhere, okay? I’ll be glad to join you in a total, raving freakout.” Her voice was on a thin edge, sharper than she intended, and she bit her lower lip and looked away. “We’ve both lost people today, Daryl. We’ll make it.” She was staring at a dead family on a nearby lawn. “Fuck,” she hissed, ducking down and playing with the radio and the CB. Except for the EBS tone on the AM channel, there was nothing. She turned the radio back to the EBS tone and sat there for a moment. “Still automatic, right?” she asked softly.

“If they were there they’d be talking to us. Maybe somebody will come on later.”

“Right, I’ll keep this fucking ear piercing tone on, just in case we weren’t both about to lose our minds.” She flicked the radio off as Daryl started down the road, straddling the center line.