“Drive, Bernie, bloody drive,” Jack shouted.
“I’m trying,” Bernie frantically replied. The engine turned over and the SUV quickly jerked forward.
I looked back through the rear window as we moved away. A short, fat man had abandoned stealth and was now running towards the SUV; luckily, Bernie managed to pick his way through the stationary obstacles on the road faster than our pursuers speed. He stopped when he arrived opposite the Aldi. He must have seen the woman with the axe as he jumped off the side of the expressway. For now, the immediate danger had gone.
“We need to make sure we keep our guard up at all times,” I said.
“Yeah, imagine if the woman with the axe didn’t turn up? How close would he have got?” Lea replied.
“I would have taken him out,” Jack said.
Perhaps Jack would have, but it was an important lesson for us to remain vigilant.
We drove in silence towards Interstate 684, we had agreed for the time being that we shouldn’t stop again unless it was an emergency. I was maintaining a careful watch outside of the SUV, as we slowly picked our way through stationary traffic and over the occasional body along the Hutchinson River Parkway. Once there, the vehicles thinned out, which allowed Bernie to increase our speed out of the city.
“Fucking Morgan,” Jack eventually said.
“What’s wrong Jack?” Lea asked.
“It’s people like him that likely caused all this, and there he is trying to take control and create a little empire. We should go back and take him out.”
“What? And start killing everyone we meet who annoys you?” Bernie said.
“You know what I mean, Bernie. If there are people left, we should be working together or the world will end up like a Mad Max movie.”
I stayed quiet; even though Jack had a fair point, we couldn’t start taking the law into our own hands. Who were we to make the rules? If by some chance we managed to make it through the next few weeks, then we could start trying to piece together a community with other survivors. It’s human nature though to create a pyramid and at the top are always the wrong people. Lions led by donkeys was the First World War epitaph, but the truth lies somewhere in between. In any social group, even a hippie commune, there will be a group who try and control things. I couldn’t think of the sociology we faced, so I changed the subject.
“So what’s Orange County like then?”
“It’s a great area to live,” Bernie enthused, “I’ve always felt at home there away from the city. Have you ever been to the fair, Lea?”
“No, I haven’t really spent much time there, but I agree it’s a great place for us to head now.”
“What places have you been to?”
“Forget that, someone’s following us,” Lea replied.
I looked back and saw a blue car snaking through the traffic about a hundred yards behind us.
“We can’t let it follow us all the way to Montgomery, can we?” Bernie said.
Jack had his rifle aimed out of the back window.
“Try to get a bit further ahead. We can stop and have time to find some cover. Maybe we can ambush them,” I replied.
“Wouldn’t they see us stop and guess what was coming?” Lea said.
“So what? They either want to speak to us or kill us. We handle both exactly the same way, with caution and force if needed,” Jack said.
Bernie increased our speed. By the time the driver of the blue car reacted, we had gained enough ground to stop and set up our safety zone.
“Stop here, quickly,” I shouted.
Bernie slammed on the brakes and we came to a halt just behind what appeared to be a head on collision between two cars.
We took cover behind a red car that had stopped in the outside lane. The windows were so spattered with blood, that we could only just see outline figures inside the car. The blue car came to a stop around thirty yards away. There was a single woman inside and no sign of any weapons.
She exited the vehicle, put her arms in the air and cried out, “Please, help me. I’m on my own.”
The woman was in her twenties and was wearing jeans and a vest. Her hair was matted with blood; she didn’t appear to be armed with anything and dropped to her knees with hands in the air.
“Where have you come from? What have you been doing in the last three days?” I said.
She looked at me and seemed to be shaking with fear.
“I don’t know. I’ve been in a car accident. The last thing I remember, is a car skidding in front of me and smashing into it. I must have been unconscious for a long time. When I woke up a few hours ago, all the cars around me on the road had stopped.”
“The cars had just stopped? No dead people around? Have you come across anybody else?” Bernie asked.
“No, I haven’t seen anybody. And of course I have seen fucking dead people. How could you miss them?”
“Is this an acknowledgement of events, or a killer’s attempt to give us what we want to hear?” I whispered to the group.
“I haven’t a clue, but I don’t want to go near her,” Bernie replied.
“Ask her more questions,” Lea said, without breaking to look at any of us.
“Why did you follow us? What’s your plan?” Jack asked.
“I don’t have a plan. I just wanted to find somebody who was alive. If you doubt me because my car isn’t wrecked,” she pointed back towards the vehicle she had approached in, “this isn’t my car. Mine couldn’t be driven after the accident. Check the documents inside if you don’t believe me.”
“The documents don’t prove anything,” Bernie shouted back.
“I’m not sure how we are going to resolve the situation,” I whispered.
The woman remained kneeling on the road.
“She could come along with us, but we keep her under armed guard until we build up some trust,” Lea replied in a lowered voice.
“No way. Why risk letting her get close to us?” Jack said.
“Please, guys, stop fucking around,” The woman cried.
“Why don’t we send her away in the opposite direction? It might give us enough time to shake her off,” Bernie said.
“She could quite easily turn around and start following us again in a different car as soon as we were out of sight. Let’s ask her some more questions, but not take all day about it,” Jack replied.
“Okay, I’ll ask her a few more, but if she comes for us, we shoot, right?” I said.
Everyone behind the car nodded in agreement.
“If you want to kill us, you’re welcome to try. But one of us will then kill you, so there is no chance that you will be able to kill yourself. Do you understand?” I shouted.
“Why would I want to kill you or myself? What are you talking about? Is that what’s been happening?”
“Strip to your underwear,” Jack shouted.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Lea whispered.
“I am just making sure she has no concealed weapons.”
Lea shook her head. “Are you trying to get a cheap thrill?”
“Fuck you,” the woman answered.
“There’s another car coming towards us,” Bernie said.
In the distance, from the direction we had travelled, was a silver car.
“Let’s see if the next car can sort it out with her,” Jack said.
“What do you mean?” Bernie asked.
“We stay where we are and let the car approach. The woman and the other driver can talk, and we’ll see what happens.”
“What if she isn’t a killer and the other person is?” Lea said.
“We’ll shoot whoever attacks. If they are killers, one of them will slip if they get close to each other.”
“You’re going to use me as bait?” the woman screamed.
We all looked at her, then each other.