Summer Lane - Day Zero

“We’ve got to get her medicine,” Jay said. His fingers curled into fists. “She’s dying.”

“We don’t have medicine,” Flash said, choked up. “We’ve got nothing.”

Elle continued to hold Pix’s limp, sweaty hand.

Georgia was silent, wordless. She was angry that their journey to Sacramento, to safe haven, had been stopped by something as seemingly petty as Flash being sick.

Elle wished she’d grow up. Everyone wanted to get to Sacramento.

If Pix was sick, that wasn’t her fault.

“We’re close to a rest stop,” Elle pointed out. She had spent a lot of time studying the maps from Aunt and Uncle’s ranch house. “There’s a community a few miles from here, and there’s probably a pharmacy in town. We can search it and look for something that might help her.”

“I thought we were supposed to avoid towns,” Georgia snapped.

“We were,” Jay replied, his tone sharp. “But Pix’s sick. We don’t have a choice.”

Georgia closed her mouth, throwing her cigarette to the ground.

“Jay and I will go into town,” Elle said. “Georgia, you stay with Pix and Flash. Keep them safe.”

How did this happen? Just two days ago, they had left the ranch house in the Tehachapi hills full of high hopes. They had a car, gas, supplies and a map. They were on their way to Sacramento, the rumored safe haven for wartime survivors and militia fighters.

Nothing ever went as planned.

2 Days Earlier

Elle could smell the blood. Georgia leaned over the side of the Suzuki and puked. Pix and Flash gripped the door handles tightly. Jay stopped the jeep and they sat there, staring at the huge expanse of freeway that curved down the last stretch of the Tehachapi hills — the Grapevine.

Parts of the highway had been blown apart. Chunks of concrete was scattered throughout the hills. Dead bodies were strewn through patches of dry grass. The air stank of rotting flesh and there were spots in the soil where the rain had mixed with blood, creating red rivers in the mud.

“What happened here?” Georgia breathed, shaking.

Elle closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at the scene again.

“This was a battle,” she said. “Omega versus somebody else.”

“Who was the ‘somebody else?’” Jay said.

“Us,” Pix replied automatically. “Look at the dead. They’re Omega. They’re mostly Chinese, too. I see some National Guard uniforms out there, though.”

“So this was a fight between the National Guard and Omega,” Jay said. “Unbelievable. They just left the dead here to rot?”

“This was pretty recent,” Flash observed.

“Should we go back?” Pix asked.

“No. There’s nothing for us down south,” Jay replied.

“We can’t drive on the road the whole way. So much of it has been blown to pieces.”

“We’ll use the side roads.”

“I don’t see any signs of Omega,” Georgia added. “And I don’t see any signs of the United States military, either.”

Elle’s heart sank.

She had been hoping that they would run across the United States military, somehow, and that they would be protected. Surely the National Guard would take care of survivors. That’s why they were going to Sacramento, after all.

But that wasn’t happening. Not today.

“We need to get out of here,” Elle said. “They could come back.”

“This battle is over,” Jay replied, clenching his fist. “We have to keep going.”

No one argued. They didn’t want to go back to the city, and the only way to escape was to keep heading north. So they did. Jay navigated side roads, trying to keep the trailer from getting rocked too much. The gasoline was too valuable to lose.

It took hours to get down the mountain.

Elle tried to avoid looking at the dead that hadn’t been collected from the battlefield. Many of them had been blown to pieces. She’d never seen anything so horrible.

“Do you think it’s like this everywhere?” Pix whispered.

Elle didn’t answer. She hoped it wasn’t.

By the time they reached the bottom of the mountain, night had fallen. They passed a rest stop, Laval Road. Signs of recent military presence were everywhere. An American flag had been painted across a freeway overpass. Someone had scrawled USA FOREVER on the side of an abandoned restaurant.

“USA forever,” Georgia snorted. “Wishful thinking.”

“At least someone’s trying to keep hope alive,” Elle replied.

“It doesn’t do anything.” Georgia watched the scenery roll by, a blank expression on her face. “We’re dead. The United States, everything good about it. It’s gone. And it’s not coming back.”

Elle sighed. It was easy to believe that. Very easy.

The question was… was she going to believe it?

Jay rolled onto a freeway ramp that veered left, keeping onto the Interstate 5 freeway. It would take them straight to Sacramento if they weren’t stopped by Omega patrols. That, of course, was the trick. None of them knew where Omega was coming from or where they were keeping their forces. If they stumbled across an armed force of soldiers…

Well. It would be bad.

They drove until it was too dark to see the road. Jay decided that using the lights on the jeep would be too risky — they could be spotted a mile away — so they voted against traveling at night. They pulled over to a sheltered area on the side of the road, unrolled a piece of canvas over the roof and hunkered down for a dinner of cold canned food and stale crackers.

And then they slept.

“Pix’s missing!”

Flash was panicking. He circled the jeep twice, the color drained from his face. Elle sat up, grabbing the door handle. She had fallen asleep slumped across Jay’s knees. Realizing this, the blood rushed to her cheeks. She hoped he hadn’t noticed.

Jay was wide-awake already, jumping out of the jeep.

Good. He hadn’t.

“Missing?” Georgia practically screeched. “ Again? How many times is she going to do this to us?”

Elle climbed out of the jeep, onto the gravel. They were parked behind an overgrown bush on the side of the freeway. It was cold — low thirties. She shivered and looked around. Flash was right; there was no sign of Pix.

“Why would she wander off?” Jay said, and Elle could see that he was angry. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Maybe she just had to pee,” Georgia suggested. “She might be right back.”

“No. I’ve been calling and calling for her,” Flash replied, adjusting his glasses.

“She must have gotten turned around,” Jay said.

Georgia gestured to the sprawling, flat landscape around them.

“How could you get lost here?” she demanded. “It’s impossible!”

“Anything is possible,” Elle said. “The grass is high and there are lots of shadows. Jay’s right… she must have gotten lost when she got up. When did you notice she was gone, Flash?”

“Just now — I woke up and she wasn’t next to me.”

He seemed embarrassed that he had managed to sleep through his sister’s disappearance.

Jay answered, “We need to find her. She doesn’t have any food or water with her. She’ll get dehydrated fast.”

“Let’s split up,” Georgia suggested, sighing. “We’ll be able to find her faster.”

Jay pulled the map out of the side door of the jeep and spread it flat against the hood. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and marked their location with a small X. “We don’t go more than two miles away from this spot,” he said. “We’ll meet here in two hours.”

Elle looked at the map. Georgia was right — it would be difficult to get lost with the miles of flat freeway and grassy plains on each side of them. It would take hours to reach the top of the coastal hills on their left… and Pix hadn’t been gone that long. Besides, why would she wander that far in the first place?