It wasn’t long before Jessie was out of sight. Ahead of him, Nate caught the flash winking off a reflective street sign. He spun and spotted a pair of headlights heading his way. He hadn’t seen another working vehicle since his ill-fated journey to the plant to grab Evan. Moving off the road—the sidewalks were downright impassible—Nate stuck out his thumb and wore the kind of smile that would make a flight attendant green with envy.
The lights got closer and Nate could see it was a Tiguan, fighting through the chop. The vehicle slowed as it drew even with him and then sped past.
“Jerk,” Nate called out. He’d gotten a good glance inside as it went by. The thing was empty, apart from the driver.
The thought crossed his mind that maybe seeing the shotgun slung over his shoulder was giving people pause. He switched it to the other shoulder and carried on. Ten minutes later, he was further down the road when he spotted another pair of headlights. As he had done before, Nate moved off the road, slid the shotgun out of view, and stuck out his thumb. This time, the truck never even bothered to slow down.
He sighed. It appeared the ‘every man, woman and child for themselves’ rule was already in full effect.
Slogging along as he was, at times through powdery, freshly fallen snow and at other times through harder, wind-packed stuff, was making for slow going. If he’d gone beyond three hundred meters in the last hour, it would be a surprise to him. The tips of his fingers and toes were starting to feel numb. Strangely, his core felt like it was overheating from the exertion.
Or am I suffering from radiation poisoning?
He unzipped the top of his jacket, watching the steam escape. That was water his body was losing. Liquid he would need to replace sooner rather than later.
One hour passed before Nate reached the intersection, the one where earlier in the day he had cut across oncoming traffic, fishtailing into the backroads that led to Byron Middle School. He paused for a moment, working to catch his breath and sort out what do to next.
If he continued straight, Blackhawk Drive would eventually become Highway 2, the road that led to Rockford. The stretch between the two cities was about fifteen miles. Far too long to complete in a single hike, bum knee or not. Such a trek in July would have been child’s play. Armed as he was, Nate would have gone as long as he could. Light to see by might have been a problem, but walking out beneath the stars on a warm summer night? Heck, it almost had an inviting ring to it. Attempting the same thing now was liable to end with a man frozen to death somewhere along the shoulder of Highway 2. He did not have the slightest clue how to build an igloo or even a snow shelter for that matter. If there was no car he could break into along the way, the chances were good he would simply freeze to death.
As if to drive home the point, Nate spotted a dark boot sticking out of a nearby snow pile. He hurried over to it—of course, hurry was a relative term nowadays—and dug into six inches of powdery accumulation. With each swipe, a prone human form was coming into view. It was a man in a dark pair of blue jeans. His sneakers were black and looked battered, but expensive. Nate freed his upper body and then his head. He was dead, probably had been for hours. He cleared away the final bits around his face. This wasn’t a man at all. It was a boy, no older than thirteen or fourteen. A pair of AirPods were seated firmly, and maybe permanently, into his ears. No more than a couple of years separated him from Hunter and Emmitt. What had he been doing out here alone? Why had he lain down in the snow, never to rise again? Exhaustion?
Keep moving, Nate.
He had started hearing that voice more and more these last couple of days. That part of him determined to survive appeared to be chiming in every once in a while with a mental slap across the face. Nate’s gloves and hat were wet and caked with snow and yet this dead kid before him was dressed for Siberia. He was wearing a fur-lined aviator hat along with a pair of plush mittens. It seemed a pity to let them waste away on a corpse, however young that corpse might be. And yet the act of stripping a dead body also seemed grotesque and reprehensible.
Don’t be silly. Take the stuff. You’ll need it.
Nate stared at the young boy’s face, his youthful, innocent features frozen into something resembling a sneer. He’d read an article recently about dead climbers on Mount Everest and how their bodies acted as macabre landmarks for those on their way up. “Hang a right at Green Boots, and then a left at Yellow Jacket.” Back when things were normal, the notion had seemed rather sick to him, but many of those bodies had been sitting in Everest’s deep-freeze for decades. It was not practical or safe to chop them out of the ice and bring them down. They were part of the mountain now. A piece of the landscape. This kid felt much the same. No one but family was going to move him. Here he would lie until spring and summer when Mother Nature would complete the process.
Again came that gently commanding voice.
Nate swore before grabbing the hat. When that was done, he took the mitts as well.
He didn’t recall any religious passages condemning stealing from the dead. If the devil wanted him, he would have to wait. Nate wasn’t ready to die. Not just yet. He had too much to live for.
Like descending from the summit of Everest, Nate knew the journey back to his family would be arduous and brimming with danger, both natural and man-made. And like that same great mountain, the dead and dying would mark his path, a string of twisted landmarks on the way out of hell.
Chapter 23
After knocking the ice off his new hat and mitts, Nate contemplated what direction to go in. Heading straight, along Highway 2, would begin the long and difficult trek to Rockford. To the right was the side road that led to the middle school. Going that way would add time, no doubt about it. On the flipside, he would eventually reach the school itself, where he could take shelter and rest. The route along the highway snaked in tandem with Rock River and offered nowhere he could hole up to refuel his body and recharge his spirits.
Right it is then.
Thus far that little voice hadn’t led him astray. And so he was busy putting one foot—albeit awkwardly—in front of another when he realized heading toward the school offered him another advantage. If somehow, the bus convoy hadn’t yet left―doubtful as that was―or became stuck in the snow and forced to return, then there was a chance he might find them there. Without any way of communicating, him setting off for Rockford when his family had never left Byron would quickly start to feel like a sick comedy of errors. How we’d ever lived without cell phones, Nate did not know.
The backstreets to the middle school were lined with homes typical of the area, somewhere between country and suburban. Bungalows were plentiful, with generous yards on both sides. It was hard to tell how many of these homes were occupied. The town, with the county’s help, had begun the impossible task of telling folks to evacuate. This area was still seven miles inside the exclusion zone. That meant depending on the direction of the wind, everything here could be contaminated, including Nate. Contrary to popular belief, exposure to radiation didn’t guarantee immediate death or even cancer. Genetics had a part to play as well. Some near Fukushima and Chernobyl had got sick and died from the same exposure that had little to no effect on others.
Nate made a point of walking inside the tire tracks on the road. It was hard going, and more than once he lost his balance or his tired legs gave out, sending him tumbling into a cloud of snow. That was when he recalled the young boy at the intersection, imagining that must have been the way things had gone for him. He had fallen down and never found the will to get back up. Perhaps that was the difference between them. Nate had something to live for. Two things, actually, if you counted his unborn daughter.