Wormwood Dawn (Episode VI) Read Free

him. Not at all. She would be better off without him, in fact. One thing was certain, though; he needed her. Did he ever.
    “You won’t die,” she said, slinging her pack over her back. “Not on my watch.”
     
    “3 rd Street eventually runs out of town,” Toni said as they emerged from the sporting goods store. “We could go east to the edge of town and hit the highway.”
    “Where will that take us?” Jake asked.
    “Well, there are some little towns along the way,” she replied. “Then somewhere between here and Columbus, there’s Nashville.”
    “Tennessee?”
    Toni snickered. “No,” she said. “Nashville, Indiana.”
    Jake grunted. He had never heard of it. “What’s there?”
    Toni shook her head, shrugging. “Who knows? But it’s a small town in the big woods. Could be lots of places to hide. Maybe your friends went there.”
    “I doubt it,” Jake said. “Dan isn’t much of a big city guy, but I think he would stick close to one so he could go on supply runs.”
    “Then Nashville would be perfect,” Toni said. “It’s almost exactly between Bloomington and Columbus. He would have his choice of two major cities.”
    Jake nodded, sticking out his bottom lip. Toni chuckled when she saw it.
    She had a point, Jake realized. Nashville would be perfect if it was located between two cities. It would be a logical place to go. But would Dan know that? He had never heard Dan mention Nashville, or Columbus for that matter. Drew, either. What were the odds?
    Fuck it.
    “Alright,” Jake said, finally. “Let’s go to Nashville.”
    Toni stopped, scanning the area around them. They had just left the confines of the city itself and had wandered into the outskirts. Though there were cars everywhere, none of them looked like they had simply been abandoned. Even so, if they found one with the keys in it, it would probably also have rotting corpses sitting inside.
    “How far is it?” Jake asked.
    “About twenty minutes by car,” Toni replied. “But it doesn’t look like we’ll be driving. I don’t imagine any of these cars have any gas left in them.”
    “It wouldn’t hurt to check.”
    Toni nodded, heading off toward the nearest car. It was a little VW something, compact and not very masculine. She inspected it, walking a full circle around it, looking in the windows, and kicking the tires. Jake opened the passenger door, seeing the tiny seats.
    “No fuckin’ way,” he said. “My left leg wouldn’t fit in this.”
    “No keys, anyway.”
    “You can’t hotwire a car?” Jake asked.
    Toni gave him that look again. “Can you?” she asked.
    Jake shrugged. “Well,” he said. “Next…”
    They turned to the next closest vehicle, a mid-sized Ford Taurus. There were two bodies inside, both of them leaning against their respective windows. Toni knocked on the passenger side window, standing back and placing her left hand on the revolver at her hip. The corpses inside began to stir. They moved their heads, leaving sticky trails of slimy flesh on the glass.
    “Yuck,” Jake said. “Okay, not this one.”
    “Do we leave them?” Toni asked.
    “What else are we gonna do?” Jake said. “They can’t get out. They’ll eventually putrefy and be useless; you know, like a Ford Taurus.”
    Toni’s grin was striking. Her teeth were perfect, Jake noticed. Now if she would only take off that headscarf.
    “What’s under that scarf?” he asked.
    She gave him a strange look. “My head.”
    “No,” he said, smiling. “I can see a big braid underneath it. I know you have hair.”
    She reached up and pulled off the scarf. Underneath, her hair was slicked back and tied into a braid that hung down between her shoulder blades. Jake smiled, rubbing his own bald head. Toni chuckled, tying her scarf again.
    “I could use a shave,” Jake said. “Maybe I can use that knife of yours.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    As they chuckled, a single shuffler rounded a trailer ahead. It stumbled toward them