Jack would use that to his advantage.
Before there had been a question of speed versus stealth, but now, Jack went for stealth.
He set off in a run, and the woman followed behind him.
He tried to look everywhere, keeping the car in his periphery as he searched the area for threats.
There were many, far too many for him to try to handle, so his only hope was that he reached the car before they noticed he and the woman were there.
The car was getting closer, closer still, and Jack pushed himself harder, trying to run faster.
He reached the car about two seconds before the woman did.
They had both gone to the driver’s side, and when she stopped in front of the car, the locks disengaged.
To Jack, it sounded eerily like a dinner bell, and the occupants of the front lawn seemed to agree.
At the sound, they looked up, moving almost in unison and just as quickly narrowing in on Jack and the woman.
“Hurry,” he said firmly, not yelling, but hoping that she understood the seriousness of the situation.
She pulled the door open and crawled across the console, her height and size making her motions looked unwieldy though she moved with deceptive speed.
Jack wasted no time getting in beside her and trying to pull the door closed.
“Key!” he said.
Instead of handing him the key, the woman groped under the steering wheel, and then pushed the button.
The car spring to life, and when Jack slammed his foot on the brake, the woman reached for the gearshift and put the car in reverse.
The black screen in the middle console lit up, and Jack could see that someone was behind him. The camera was grainy, but Jack didn’t need a crystal-clear image to know that something was wrong.
Everything about the way the person moved was awkward, odd.
Human, but also not.
Jack didn’t know whether it was a man or woman, the gore and injuries on the body obscuring the thing’s sex.
He slammed on the gas.
The car rolled over the thing, and it didn’t make a sound.
He put the car in drive but looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the thing was standing up.
That shouldn’t have been possible, not with what looked like two broken legs, but it was happening, and when Jack locked eyes with the thing, he saw nothing behind those eyes but pure malice.
He slammed on the gas, driving the little compact as fast as it would go.
“You hit that person!” the woman screamed, sounding as close to hysterical as Jack had heard her.
He didn’t bother to look at her, instead intent on focusing on the road, but he did speak.
“That wasn’t a person.”
“Wasn’t a person?” Cassandra said.
Though she was asking a question, Cassandra knew she hadn’t misheard him. She wished she had, much like she wished she hadn’t seen what she had on the courthouse lawn.
But wishing wouldn’t make it go away.
Cassandra tried to wrap her mind around what she had seen, what she had heard. She wasn’t able to.
In the hours since she had entered the building, it felt like the entire world had changed.
But that couldn’t be the case. It just couldn’t be.
She pressed the buttons on the radio, scrolling through until she found a news station.
When she did, words she never thought she’d hear blasted over the air.
“This is not a test.”
“Oh, God,” she said.
She went quiet as quickly as she had spoken though, refusing to give in to panic.
“Hold it together,” the man said.
“I will,” she said.
She wished she felt as confident as she sounded, but this was yet another case where wishing would do her no good.
So instead, she tried to focus on what she knew, which was precious little.
From what she could see, her formally quaint little section of town had descended into madness. The windows of her favorite coffee shop had been broken out, and she saw another one of those piles of bloody flesh that used to be a person in front of it.
There were several small fires in trash cans, but Cassandra knew those would soon spread.
Those signs of disorder, disarray, were nothing in the face of the others.
She’d seen those clusters, those packs of what looked like people eating other people.
She had tried to ignore it, but seeing scenes like this over and over again as the man maneuvered her small car through the cluttered streets was almost too much for her mind to fathom.
She couldn’t seem to draw her eyes away, though she didn’t want to look.
Finally, when she landed on a small hand, spotted what looked to be a little pink bag splattered with what she knew was blood, she turned away.
She focused on the man, trying to mimic his stoicism and failing miserably. And then, finally, she asked the question that she prayed someone would be able to answer.
“What the hell is going on?”
CHAPTER SIX
Cassandra didn’t really expect an answer, and the man didn’t give her one.
Besides, there wasn’t an answer, not one that would make any sense. Not one that would make what she had seen more believable, more bearable.
So, since she didn’t know what was happening, and the recorded broadcast on the radio wasn’t telling her anything else, she focused on what she could control in this moment.
The man was barely moving fifteen miles an hour. The streets were strewn with litter, the remnants of car crashes and more of those stains on the asphalt that Cassandra knew had once been people.
She ignored them all and said a silent prayer of thanks that she had ignored her uncle’s teasing and gone with the compact electric rather than 4 x 4 he had been pushing on her.
No way anything bigger than her compact would have been able to make it through this mess, and what the vehicle lacked in power it made up for in maneuverability, which was what it seemed they needed at this moment.
Cassandra turned and spotted her neglected gym bag on the backseat. She grabbed it and rummaged through, grateful when she found her sneakers.
She’d picked them mostly for the fashion, the bright neon colors appealing to her eye and giving her a bad-ass look when she paired them with the perfectly coordinated pants and top. She had no idea if they were functional, but they had proven more than enough for her attempts at working out, and if nothing else, they would be far better than her boots.
She slid the car seat back as far as it would go and then kicked the boots off her feet, unwilling to touch them, unwilling to really look at them. She had no idea what was on them.
That wasn’t true.
She knew exactly what was on them, and thinking about that made her shiver. She quickly stuffed her feet into the sneakers and then kicked the boots underneath the seat.
Next, she went to the gym bag and wrapped her fingers around a bottle of water.
Her friends teased her for still using plastic, but in this moment, she was grateful.
“Here,” she said to the man.
He looked at her quickly and then grabbed the water from her hand.
She listened as he opened the cap, took two long swallows, and then handed the bottle back to her.
“There’s more. In the trunk,” she said.
He nodded but then pushed the bottle at her again.
She took it and then tentatively sipped, letting the room temperature water wet her dry mouth. She was feeling queasy and worried that even the sips of water would make her stomach rebel.
To her surprise, the water was refreshing and only made her realize how thirsty she had been. She took a few more sips and then closed the water.
She went back into her gym bag, scrounging around the bottom before she pulled out a wrapped granola bar.