The sun was well above the horizon when I woke the next morning. At first, I sat wondering what had happened. Usually, I would wake when the sun began to rise. Then I remembered the events of the day before. I looked at the passenger seat, but she wasn't there. Panic struck for a second before I saw her sitting on the hood of the Juggernaut. She sat with her feet pulled up on the hood and her arms wrapped around her knees. She seemed so peaceful sitting there. I couldn't help but watch her for a moment before getting out to talk with her.
As I closed the car door, she looked over and smiled at me. She'd been awake for a little while but hadn't wanted to wake me, so she'd gone outside. The building she'd been holed up in had been the only safe place she'd been since the outbreak. Even then, she'd always felt like there might be some new danger lurking around every corner. Yet, here, in the wide open nowhere, it actually felt safe.
As I listened to her talk, I climbed onto the hood next to her and surveyed the landscape. The empty freeway stretched out before us and in the distance, I could see an enormous bridge that stretched across some important river. A quiet little town blanketed the hillside that sat on the opposite side of the river. There were also some scattered farmhouses and fence lines that looked like they came from a different era. Everything around us looked like it belonged. There was no sign of the plague: no crashed cars, no corpses, and no maddened scavengers. It was beautiful. I hadn't really noticed the scenery as I made my way westward. My only thought had been to get to California. I told Charlotte as much. We sat there for a long while and talked, enjoying the landscape and the sense of peace it held.
As the morning sun rose higher, it got warmer and we started driving once again. When we drove onto the bridge, Charlotte rolled down her window and stuck out her hand. It danced through the wind like a bird in flight. As her hand danced, I looked at her face. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling. She looked so free in that moment; as if she wasn't actually sitting in the seat next to me, but was instead gliding through the air, a hundred feet off the ground. It was captivating. I wanted to stay in that moment. I wanted the way it felt to last all the way to California.
We reached the end of the bridge and meandered up the hill on the other side. The highway we were on zigzagged up the hill and through the town. As we turned back and forth, we were granted views of the river valley. The sun was nearly overhead and its light made the surface of the river seem to shimmer. I was sad to leave the sight behind as we crested the hill. I turned my head for a final look. Then Charlotte gasped.
The town we'd just driven through didn't end at the crest of the hill. At least, it hadn't. Now the town on this side of the hill was in ruins. A fire had destroyed most of the buildings along Main Street and seemed to have skipped around through the rest of the town. As we drove through the wreckage, birds flew out from in front of us. There were also a few wild dogs that ran through the streets as we approached. I took little notice of them, my attention instead being drawn mostly to the destruction of the town itself. The town, with its patchwork destruction, left me feeling as if a shadow of death was lingering over the place, like a cloud passing over a landscape creates a shadow that rests on some areas while leaving others untouched. The comparison made my skin crawl. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
I guided the Juggernaut through the wreckage as quickly as I could. Main street was clear up until where the city hall had stood. There, the shadow of death was thickest. The old building had toppled into the street. We drove onto a side street to get around the fallen giant. The ruined part of the town was oppressive with its skeletal structures, carrion feeders and wild dogs, but the town was soon behind us and the oppressive feeling began to subside.
I'd pretty much ignored Charlotte as we'd driven through the town, but now I turned to look at her. Her already pale face was drained of color and her eyes looked haunted again. She'd drawn her legs up into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. It reminded me of a child hiding in the corner of a closet when something bad had happened. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead. Whatever fleeting sense of happiness we'd felt this morning felt as if it had been ripped away; its warmth stolen by the chill that lingered in the ruins.
I pulled into a gas station once the town was far behind us. I hated to stop, but we needed fuel, as well as some food. I grabbed my swords and waited a moment before hopping out of the Juggernaut. The place seemed safe, but it still felt eerie. We filled up the Juggernaut and scrounged around for food that hadn't yet expired. Charlotte moved around like a frightened rabbit and I felt like my heart was slowly climbing up my throat. My hands were always jumping to my swords. Every noise seemed out of place: the wind, birds, the crinkling of packaged food being pulled off shelves. Every noise that broke the silence made me want to jump. The silence itself made me nervous, as if something bad was about to happen. The fear and dread rested heavily on me until we were back in the Juggernaut and headed down the road again.
There was some normal looking country for a while. It wasn't beautiful, like the river valley, but it made it easier to pretend that we were on a normal road trip. It was an impossible delusion to sustain, but there were moments when I was able to forget. There were moments when Charlotte was an old friend. There were moments where it felt like we were on vacation. It didn't last long, though. After only a few hours, something out of the ordinary loomed on the horizon.
As we got closer, I began to recognize Humvees and military trucks. It looked as though they had blocked off the road to turn back traffic. I can only assume they were trying to quarantine an area. Their efforts had failed. The place looked like a war zone. Some of the civilian vehicles were peppered with bullet holes. Some had caught on fire and become burned out shells. Corpses were scattered around the blockade and amid civilian and military vehicles. As we drove off the road and around the blockade, I saw some zombies lurking around the vehicles. Some were in civilian clothes. Others were in military dress. It was then that I felt the madness lurking beneath the surface.
At first, it was just a feeling that rested somewhere in my gut. The feeling grew. It clawed at the edges of the calm I held on to. I tried to focus on driving. I tried to focus on California, but still the unrest grew. Soon, I was at war within myself: a war that I was steadily losing. The day before, I would have gotten out and found something to kill. I would have torn through the undead ranks like a maddened berserker. But not this time. I could win this fight. The unrest and anger advanced on my thinking mind. I knew what would happen if they took control. I fought back with rage. I would not sit back and be a whimpering victim. I wouldn't hand my mind over to the madness inside me.
Soon, the war between my rage and the madness was the only thing left in my thoughts. The wheels of the Juggernaut kept rolling, but they were guided more by instinct than any conscious thought. In spite of the amount of will that was pouring into my rage, I was steadily losing ground. Though the battlefield was within my mind, its fires seemed to spread through my body. My whole being felt as if the fires of the madness sought to consume it. I felt a fear growing within me. I was going to lose this fight. I knew there was no way I could keep the madness at bay. Yet, I kept struggling against it. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew there was a reason I couldn't give up. I knew there was a reason for fighting that was larger than myself. I tried desperately to remember what that reason was.
Something cut through the madness and the rage, then. It came upon me like a blast of cold wind, just as I felt I couldn't hold onto my sanity any longer. My mind focused on it and I tried to trace it to its source. The cold wind swept across the madness and the fire within me shrank back. I regained some of myself as the cold wind blew, and it was then that I remembered why I couldn't give up. It was then that I remembered Charlotte in the seat next to mine. The cold wind that had turned the tide was the sound of her crying.
