“Nothing,” Chris says, raising an eyebrow. Staring at me with those electric green eyes. “Just messing with you, kid.”
He uses both hands to comb the hair back from my face, making my arms prickle with Goosebumps — and they’re definitely not from the polar temperatures. He rests his thumbs against my cheek and we stand there, staring at each other in awkward silence. He seems to be searching my expression for something, some kind of secret signal, as he leans forward, too close.
The tip of his nose touches mine and right then it becomes painfully obvious exactlywhat’s about to happen. I step backwards and twist out of his arms, pretending to adjust my backpack. My entire face is suddenly incredibly hot, tingling with a rush of warm blood. My heart beats quickly, hyperaware of even the soft touch of fabric against my skin.
“We’d better move faster,” I say, breathless, avoiding looking up. “Maybe we can find shelter before it starts to rain.”
Chris turns around, his face showing only a hint of irritation. He nods, wordless, and we set off together, the most uncomfortable silence in history hanging between the two of us.
I push the whole almost-kiss thing out of my mind and stare at the rest stop in the distance. It will be my goal of the moment. My focus. Apparently Chris feels the same way, because he seems determined to leave me in his dust as he walks along, making a point of staying in front.
Men, I think.
It takes us about forty-five minutes to walk down the massive freeway slope. It makes me appreciate that much more the awesomeness of cars. And trains. And planes. And bicycles.
At the bottom there’s an empty restaurant without a single car in sight.
I blink, a weird feeling coming over me. I saw a scene like this in a movie once. It was about a zombie apocalypse, and some cowboy walked into a western town and found out that everybody had been turned into one of the undead. He spent the rest of the movie hacking off heads with an axe.
While the zombie part is completely ludicrous, looking at everything totally abandoned is giving me the serious creeps. There should be at least some military vehicles like the National Guard coming in to help with a gigantic crisis like this. Not every single vehicle in the military is gone. Are they?
Or is the entire country down?
And if so, who did it?
And what purpose was behind it?
I shudder, picturing a nuclear explosion or an invasion. Then I push the thought away and focus on the abandoned rest stop. There are about four restaurants, three gas stations and a bunch of fast food places. It’s so big that it spreads to both sides of the freeway.
“Do you think it’s safe?” I ask, voicing the obvious question.
Chris doesn’t answer for a long time.
Finally he says, “I doubt it.”
“Then we should bypass it.”
“No. We need to rest and a storm’s coming up. We need shelter.”
I roll my eyes, realizing that I’m the one who said that very thing just a little bit ago. But men will be men so I just keep my mouth shut and let him think it was his idea all along.
We reach the rest stop about thirty minutes later. There are cars everywhere, though the ones here don’t appear nearly as ravaged as the ones up in the Grapevine. Still, no sign of people. We walk down the off ramp that leads to the rest area, my whole body tense because of the lack of background noise. No jets flying somewhere in the sky, no distant car alarm going off, no impatient mother yelling at her kids to get the heck into the car before she takes away all their toys.
“This is unusual,” Chris says.
I stare at him.
“You think?”
We walk across the freeway overpass, where I note something bizarre. There is blood all over the guardrails. It’s not a lot of blood, but it’s also splattered all over the sidewalk in a long, uneven line. As if a bunch of people were standing in a line and just started bleeding for no particular reason.
“Chris…” I murmur.
“I’ve seen this before,” he replies, his voice dark.
“You’ve seen this?”
He nods.
A cold feeling shoots down my body.
What does that mean?
Chris sets his jaw and walks forward. This time he takes out his gun and holds it like one of those military guys in the movies. Only he actually seems to know how to hold the gun without shooting himself in the foot. That’s something I could never do.
I swallow and walk in his footsteps, staying behind his shoulder, getting a really bad feeling about all of this. As we come over the end of the overpass, I find myself struggling to breathe. A horrified scream sticks in my throat as I look out over the four lane boulevard leading into the rest area.
It’s covered with bodies.
Bloody. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. They are strewn out in uneven patches, some stacked on top of each other. The stench from the drying blood is so strong that it permeates everything — including me. I run to the guardrail and puke over the side, not able to stop myself. It’s horrific. It’s unimaginable.
It can’t be real.
“What the hell…?” Chris says, doing a full circle. “What the hell is this?”
I look down at my feet and notice something else. The pavement is streaked with the same sticky blood that covered the sidewalk on the overpass.
Chris suddenly turns to me, a look of hard anger on his face.
“This is no accident,” he states.
I stare, knowing that I’m shaking like a leaf.
“Cassidy,” he says, his tone making it sound like a question. “Look at me.”
I can’t. I’m just smelling the blood, seeing the blood, looking at the bodies lined up - no, piled — on the boulevard. I always thought seeing gross stuff would be easy to handle. But this? No.
Chris walks up to me and places his hands on the sides of my face.
“Look. At. Me.” It’s not a request.
I barely managed to lift my eyes up to meet his — not quite as emotionless as I would have expected. Instead, his expression is soft. “Say something, kid,” he says, stroking my cheek. “Look at me.”
“What happened?” I say, monotone.
“I don’t know.”
He searches my face for a long time before turning me around. He laces his fingers through mine and pulls me forward, purpose in each step.
“What…where are we going?” I stutter, still shocked.
“Whatever happened here,” Chris says, shoving a few loose strands of hair away from his face, “was not an accident. It was a systematic extermination.”
“By who?”
He shrugs. Obviously neither of us can answer that one, but chances are that whoever did this was the same group of sickos that hit our world with an EMP.
“What about shelter?” I say, by this time jogging across the overpass.
“Not here. This blood is fresh. This didn’t happen more than twenty-four hours ago,” Chris points out. “Look at this trail of blood. People were lined up and wiped out.”
I start to hyperventilate.
“Oh. My. God.” I cover my mouth with my hand, more food coming up my throat. “Is this some kind of nightmare? This isn’t real, right?”
Chris rubs his chin, assessing my freak-out moment.
“This is real,” he says at last. Firm. “And we’re going to be okay. Got that?”
I nod, numb.
He takes me hand again and we walk down the onramp. I start to notice how buildings along the freeway have broken windows. Some of the glass is black — like it had been blown up from within. The freeway is also covered with funny black marks. Not tire marks. Something else.