Lost in the Apocalypse Read Free Page A

goofy grin.
    “He’s right,” Kari said from his lap. How she was comfortable sprawled on top of Cody, Neil didn’t know, but he didn’t ask. The unlikely pair had been cozy ever since he’d found them outside of Forrest, trying to sneak their way past Z’s to get to I-70. “We’ve been driving for days. It’s time to stop.”
    “We’ll find a place,” Neil insisted. “South of town.” He noticed the blockage of cars on the main road. There would be no way to make it through the makeshift parking lot. What had once been a bustling town now was filled with abandoned trucks and minivans. All of them were half-covered in dirt: a sure sign the owners had lived on nearby country roads.
    “There are going to be plenty of empty houses,” Kari agreed, suddenly serious. Neil knew she saw the dirt marks, too, and knew what they meant. “You can’t live on a gravel road and keep a clean car,” she commented.
    “We need to go around,” he shifted to reverse and backed up, pulling a three-quarter point turn that would have made his Driver’s Ed instructor proud. He went to the last intersecting gravel road, turned east, then took the next turn south again. “This should take us past town,” he commented, but no one was paying any attention.
    Butter was undoubtedly asleep in the back of the truck, while Neil knew Robert would be watching, carefully keeping an eye out for other survivors, for Infected, for anything. Robert had been tight-lipped on his job before the infection, but Neil would bet half of what he did was off-the-books, special-ops type stuff. He had that look about him.
    They bypassed the town easily enough. When they turned back on the main road, Neil glanced back in the rearview mirror.
    “Lot of Z’s,” Kari commented. She was right. They covered the road and several turned to look at the truck puttering past. “Step on it,” she said. “We don’t want them following us.”
    Neil had been maintaining an even pace, keeping his gas usage low. They were at less than a quarter tank now and they wouldn’t make it far. It was time to find a place to stay. They needed to hole up somewhere, even for the night. Maybe they’d find a place they could stay longer, he didn’t know. They had been running for so long that all he wanted to do now was find “home.”
    Any place would do. He wasn’t picky.
    “There have to be houses around here,” Neil said. “And if all the Z’s are in town, I’m guessing most of the farmhouses are empty.” He took a random turn and then another. Soon they were in a forested area on a gravel road. They passed a house right in front of the road, but he kept going. If they were going to find a place to stay long-term, they would want to be a little ways back from the road, to avoid prying eyes.
    They hadn’t run into cannibals or rapists or murderers, not the way he would have expected. Not with something this severe, this extreme. Neil had expected an infection of this magnitude that had ravaged the world to bring out the darkest of humanity, but all it had done was cause people to squirrel away.
    Maybe the hordes of villains would come out later, he reasoned. Maybe strange leaders and factions would take over towns and cause some new, dark shadow of civilization. For now, though, everyone was still in shock.
    Everyone was still hiding.
    Everyone was still breaking.
    “There,” Cody pointed to a faded mailbox that was half-hidden by a tree branch. “There’s a driveway.” It was hidden from the road and Neil took a left into the driveway. The gravel road turned into a hard dirt area, not really a driveway, just a dirt space. He pulled up to a little cabin and they all stared at it. When he looked back, he couldn’t see the road. It was completely hidden by the trees.
    Neil turned back to stare at the house. It was a modest cabin, maybe two or three rooms, and there was a dilapidated barn, the kind you’d expect to read about in a horror novel, the kind that