{"id":531,"date":"2009-11-06T08:38:39","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T13:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=531"},"modified":"2018-10-30T19:56:53","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T23:56:53","slug":"judgment-day-part-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=531","title":{"rendered":"Judgment Day: Part 21"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nMarch 21st<\/em><\/p>\n

Sugarloaf Mountain<\/em><\/p>\n

Interstate 270 was one of the main feeds into Washington, connecting the Beltway with I-70 up in Frederick, which stretched westward through the country.\u00a0 Sugarloaf Mountain was near the halfway mark between DC and Frederick.\u00a0 At rush hour, though, the road was a nightmare.\u00a0 A lifeline to the northern suburbs, a highway that fanned out to twelve lanes in Rockville.\u00a0 All that traffic was a frozen river now, but Daryl was able to do well by dancing from the shoulder to the inbound lanes.\u00a0 The traffic leaving Washington was harrowing to look at.\u00a0 All those cars, all those people.\u00a0 Corpses in the rain, now.\u00a0 Headlights burning out, a few cars still idling here and there with thin lines of exhaust rising in the air.\u00a0 Groups of people had gathered at points along the road, the final panicked moments of the doomed.\u00a0 Daryl and Molly didn\u2019t speak, as if they were standing in a mausoleum. The world was reduced to the sound of the van on the wet pavement and the day\u2019s rain.<\/p>\n

The groups of people who had left there cars didn\u2019t make it very far.\u00a0 Their corpses were huddled along the median or the shoulder.\u00a0 A few had run, or so it seemed.\u00a0 They were scattered here and there, broken and bloody.\u00a0 They hadn\u2019t died of the virus, or whatever it was.\u00a0 They\u2019d been killed in their tracks, brought down like animals hunted for sport.\u00a0 Even with terrified cobwebs in the head and the grey rain all around, that much was obvious.\u00a0 Daryl swerved around a body, shattered face staring up at the passing van.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy God,\u201d Molly whispered.\u00a0 \u201cHow many of those things do you think there are?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know it only takes one.\u201d\u00a0 He felt her eyes on him and looked in his rear view mirror self-consciously, not sure what he was looking for.\u00a0 All that he saw behind him were bodies and cars, the dead highway.\u00a0 \u201cI wonder how they survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo they eat like us?\u00a0 Do they need water?\u00a0 Rest?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s it matter?\u00a0 They\u2019re killers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if they have a weakness, it\u2019d be nice to know it.\u00a0 Will they be dead in a month?\u00a0 Used up?\u00a0\u00a0 Can they multiply?\u00a0 Infect us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA weakness?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they need sustenance, water, rest, it\u2019s a weakness.\u00a0 Anything human is a weakness.\u00a0 And we can use it against them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He felt Molly\u2019s eyes on him again, then she sniffed and tapped the dashboard, \u201cNorth, Daryl, north.\u201d<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t want to spend a night on this road and he agreed with that.\u00a0 At the current rate, the relatively short distance to Sugarloaf would take the rest of the day.\u00a0 But there was no way around that on the crowded highway.\u00a0 Her voice had an edge in it that made him think of how he felt on the neighbor\u2019s lawn, crouched in the living room, looking down at the collection of an infected girl\u2019s insane mind.\u00a0 They had the rest of their lives to find answers, to survive, to study the fate of those who did not die one night in March of 2002.<\/p>\n

He was already beyond exhaustion.\u00a0 He felt like he could sleep for weeks, a lifetime.\u00a0\u00a0 The city-bound HOV lane was clear enough for him to get some speed, which helped clear his head a bit.\u00a0 Sugarloaf Mountain was a popular day-trip for many Washingtonians,\u00a0 but it closed at dusk so, perhaps, they could escape the dead for a little while.\u00a0 As long as what awaited them wasn\u2019t a part of the evil that had so violently entered their lives.<\/p>\n

But if Martin and Azizi were okay, Sugarloaf would be the perfect spot to intercept other survivors fleeing the city.\u00a0 Who had fired those shots last night?\u00a0 Who was racing desperately through the streets of Wheaton?\u00a0 There certainly were others out there.\u00a0 They\u2019d have to leave, and north was the best route.\u00a0 The fastest way out of the metropolitan sprawl and into the anonymity of the countryside.<\/p>\n

He glanced at Molly, who alternated between playing with the radio and staring at her hands.\u00a0 She seemed to retreat into her own world as the buildings fell behind them and the highway narrowed down to four lanes.\u00a0 She had stopped looking through the windows, keeping eyes downcast. Good thinking, he wished he could look away from the dead highway as well.<\/p>\n

He edged onto the shoulder and kept up the speed, splashing through puddles and keeping an eye out for signs of life \u2013 any life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing out here\u2026\u201d Molly said after a while.\u00a0 She glanced out the side window as they passed a semi which had jack-knifed and rolled off into the young forest beside the highway. \u201cBut, we\u2019re doing okay, right?\u00a0 There\u2019ll be others who are strong, right?<\/p>\n

Daryl shrugged.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t any good signs now.\u00a0\u00a0 She nodded and looked at her own hands for several minutes, then looked back out the window and watched the trees roll past.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo is it a disease?\u201d she asked after several quiet minutes.<\/p>\n

She was nervous, scared.\u00a0 She needed to talk.\u00a0 Needed to hear someone talk to her.\u00a0 Fuck, he was feeling the same way.\u00a0 He wanted to scream for the rest of the day, scream and punch things and melt down to nothing but a shuddering, terrible despair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said at last, slowing down to ease between three cars that had crashed into each other, the van gently bumping against the jersey wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould the dead\u2026\u201d Molly cleared her throat, \u201cCould they wake up later?\u00a0 Like in all those movies?\u201d<\/p>\n

He smiled, though it felt false, \u201cSee, you\u2019re a movie junky, too.\u201d\u00a0 He patted her knee and she grabbed his hand with both of hers, making a strange noise in the back of her throat.\u00a0 He wanted to hug her, but he had to keep moving.\u00a0 Had to leave all this behind.\u00a0 Stop and they would die.\u00a0 Stop and let the breakdown hit and they\u2019d never get off this road.\u00a0 He shook his head.\u00a0 There were no answers.\u00a0 Nothing he could say.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t think she expected answers, anyway.\u00a0 If it was a disease, they had certainly been exposed to it.\u00a0 There was no guarantee that they were immune, no promise that whatever had happened to everyone else wouldn\u2019t eventually happen to them.\u00a0 There was a whole nest of thoughts he wanted to avoid, so he focused on the way her hands felt, her scent, and the rainy day directly ahead of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[404],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nachos-lousy-novel","tag-nachos-lousy-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}