A Thousand Miles to Nowhere Read online

  From where she was, everything looked abandoned. The RV park was in bad shape. Most of the mobile homes had fallen over. The few that still stood upright had their doors wide open and swung lifelessly in the wind. She watched as one door kept getting slammed shut by a massive gust of wind, only to creep back open a several feet and get slammed back into place. A small bike had been secured to a post but stripped of its tires. Sporadic cars sat in old parking spots.

  Something in one of the vehicles caught her eye. At first, she thought it might have been a withered, but after keeping her gaze on it for a few seconds, she determined it to be just another dead body.

  She turned her attention to the lodge. It had been fortified heavily at one point with two-by-fours and large sections of plywood and sheet metal. Barbed wire wrapped around the perimeter. Only one doorway was open, and there was no door. The hole in the wall was also much larger than any doorway. She looked around but saw nothing else, so she waved Matt and Steve up.

  “How’s it look?” Matt asked.

  “Clear. Only saw one dead guy. And he was dead-dead, not withered-dead,” she clarified.

  “Okay, then, let’s move up,” Matt said.

  One by one, they cleared the standing mobile homes only to find sand-covered furniture, abandoned toys, and other useless personal items that had been stacked in boxes and waited to be carried away by their previous owners: photo albums, jewelry, and old electronics. Nothing of use.

  The abandoned personal effects made Matt wonder where everyone had gone in such a hurry. Had this been an attempt at getting away in the early days, or had they been forced to flee sometime after the plague?

  They found canned goods expired by many years, nothing edible. They found clothes withered down to rags from moths and exposure to the elements. The RVs were as useless as the FEMA camp. Matt hoped the lodge would be of greater value.

  With the sun half tucked behind the ridgeline now, Matt walked toward the lodge. He focused on the open door. The wall surrounding it was pock-marked from large-caliber bullets. The window was still boarded up, but the wood was heavily splintered. A long carpet of sand marked a pathway from the parking lot to the entryway.

  Matt passed a small car with a dead man in the driver seat, nothing more than a mummy wrapped in rags. He didn’t see any tracks, either, which meant no one had been through here recently.

  Matt’s foot cleared the threshold of the door. He pivoted hard to the left with his rifle at a high ready, gaze just over the sights. His heavy breathing caused the front sights to bob and sway with each deep inhale and exhale. The stress of entering the unknown weighed on his nerves. What were they going to find inside? He adjusted his grip to control the rifle, then focused on his breathing to steady his mind and body.

  With the buttstock tucked snug into the well of his shoulder and his cheek pressed firmly against the stock, Matt scanned the darkness for shadows, movement—something other than the void the low light of dusk provided. The clanking of empty bullet casings as they bounced off one another with each of Matt’s steps was as loud as if the bullets were being shot. The silence, the darkness, the unnerving feeling of the unknown—it was all overwhelming.

  Breathe, he reminded himself. Don’t let your nerves get the best of you.

  Tara was a half-step behind Matt, and Steve a half-step behind her. Tara went right as Steve pushed through to the far end of the room. A basic entry into a small, studio-style motel room.

  And then, Steve tripped.

  Matt watched as Steve’s muscular frame hit the ground with a loud thud and released a muffled oomph as his rifle pressed deep into his ribs. He winced at the angry sound of Steve’s rib’s cracking.

  “Damn, that sounded like they broke,” Matt said.

  Steve breathed harshly through his obvious pain.

  “No, I don’t think they’re broken,” he said through clenched teeth. “At least, I’m pretty sure.”

  Tara spun, rifle up, as if expecting to see Steve engaged in a fight. Matt bit back a grin at her expression as she discovered her friend facedown, lying on top of a bony, broken corpse, tangled up like two toddlers in a pillow fight.

  A bird-like chirp of a giggle crept out of Tara’s mouth before she stopped herself. “Sorry,” she cried. “But that is funny.”

  Steve pushed himself off the floor, blushing. The barrel of his rifle clung to the skeleton. As he lifted himself, the corpse followed.

  “Goddammit,” Steve huffed as he attempted to unwrap the tattered clothing that had managed to embed itself into his kit.

  Tara laughed as the cadaver clung to Steve’s chest like an infant in a Baby Bjorn. She covered her mouth in a futile attempt to stop the giggling, but she laughed so hard, it almost brought her to tears.

  “Have I ever told you how much of a klutz you are?” Matt snickered.

  “Don’t go there,” Steve responded.

  Matt let his rifle hang and walked over to give Steve a hand. He gave Steve a half-smile as he untangled the web of bone and cloth from Steve’s gear. Eventually, the body fell to the floor and broke apart. It separated the dead man’s body—a forearm here, a femur there. The man’s head popped off and shot across the room before it rolled into the bathroom door.

  Something shuffled on the other side of the door.

  Matt trained his rifle on the door and peered through his sights. He watched the front sight bob in sync with his heaving breaths. He wondered if Steve’s collision with the corpse had startled a withered hiding on the other side, dormant from years of isolation and starvation. He questioned his own complacency for stopping to joke with his friends before clearing the rest of the room. His heart thundered through his chest into his neck. He could hear each beat as it pulsed violently. And again, he found himself wondering how many more would die because of his bad decisions.

  Steve moved in directly behind Matt, and Tara worked her way to where Matt had been standing in the corner to create an L-shaped position.

  Steve kicked the door open with one hit.

  “Small room, small room,” Matt called out as he entered, detailing to his team the need for only one person to enter.

  His night vision had set in and he could see almost as clearly as day. The toilet was straight ahead. The top lid was broken in two and rested on the floor. The shower curtain was an opaque white and covered in a mildew film from bottom to top. With the barrel of his rifle, Matt pulled back the curtain.

  What he saw made his gut wrench with anger at first, then sadness.

  Two bodies lay entangled in a matrix of bone and clothes—a woman and child, from what Matt gathered. The child wore shorts and a T-shirt that had become part of his corpse. The tiny arms wrapped around the spine and ribs of the woman. She wore jeans and a bra. If she’d been wearing a shirt, it was gone. The child’s head, still with hair that wisped off it like frayed yarn, rested on the woman’s shoulder. Even so many years after they’d died there in that blood- and shit-stained tub, Matt could picture the fear on their faces. He imagined them holding tightly to each other as what he assumed was the father of the child and the husband of the woman fought to the death a few feet away. How horrible it must have felt as that bathroom door had crept open and a stranger who wanted only to kill them walked through instead of their loved one.

  It depressed the hell out of him.

  To die in a motel bathtub covered in your own feces… No child—no human—should have to suffer like that. But these two had.

  The images fogged Matt’s mind, and he became overwhelmed with too many emotions to handle. He thought of his own brother dying in such of a horrific way. The idea that Michael could have died in their old home, latched around the breast of their half-assed mother… The thought ripped through his heart and tears welled in his eyes. He turned and walked out. He rushed past Steve and Tara to get outside the room before they noticed his state of distress.

  I need to breathe. Deep breaths, in and out. Control your shit.

  Matt
focused for a moment, lost himself on the in and out of each breath. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet his mind.

  Steve came up from behind and touched Matt on the shoulder. His heart skipped a beat and before he could say a word, Matt spun and drew his secondary weapon, a subcompact .40 caliber Glock like his dad had once used for work.

  Steve’s eyes widened.

  Just in time, Matt realized it was only his friend. “Sorry, brother,” he said.

  “Yeah, we’re good, bro,” Steve responded, his voice tight from nerves. “Is everything good with you?”

  “I’m fine. Just needed a minute. Thought I was going to throw up for a second. Might have been those apples we found on the way down,” he lied.

  Steve’s face screwed up. “Right, the apples.”

  Matt knew he didn’t buy it, but it didn’t matter. What good would it do tell anyone? Everyone had lost someone. Telling Steve would accomplish nothing but making him worry. And worrying about Matt was not something Steve needed to do.

  Tara walked out of the room, her shadow like a ghost.

  Matt’s head wasn’t right. He needed rest. It had only been a few days since the incident at Camp O, and he was already worn down. In an attempt to both distract his mind and get the team focused on a camping location, he reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out a map. He knelt and laid the map out on the sandy ground.

  He looked it over, pressing down on the torn pieces to get a full image of where they were and where they needed to go. In his head, he worked through it. His finger moved about the map and traced lines from one point to another.

  “We need a secure place to sleep. On any other day, one of these rooms would be fine, but I’m not feeling it, so we’re going somewhere else.”

  Matt could feel the lie about his emotions coming to the surface again as he spoke. He was right, those rooms inside the lodge were secure. He was letting his attachment to the past influence his decisions.

  Tara looked at Steve, a confused expression on her face. She opened her mouth to protest, but Steve hushed her with a finger to his lips and a curt shake of his head.

  Matt continued, “There are some wind caves about a mile’s walk south of here. It’ll take us off course slightly, but we can make that thirty minutes up in the morning. The caves will more than likely be a secure place to sleep, and to be honest, I’ve always wanted to sleep in a cave. Seems as good a time as any.” He smiled.

  “Okay,” Tara said hesitantly.

  She looked at Steve as if to say something, but only got a shrug of his shoulders and pursed lips in return.

  “Let’s go,” Matt said as he folded up the map.

  He smiled as he walked off, acting as if nothing was wrong. It felt fake. He was sure it looked fake, but much like his lie about feeling sick to his stomach, it didn’t matter. They left the motel and headed off to find the caves.

  The night’s sky was entirely upon them with almost no moon to light their path. They stumbled over jagged rocks and boulders in the dark as they blindly searched out the small outcropping of caves that should have been carved into the canyon walls. But all they saw were signs of rock slides, not a cave in sight.

  Eventually, they found a small wooden sign that barely stood upright. Had Steve not needed to use the bathroom, they would have missed the sign altogether. All it said was “Wind Caves, 1 Mile.”

  “A mile to the caves, huh,” Tara snipped.

  Matt ignored the remark and followed what looked like the only route to the caves. To his pleasure, the path was smooth, easy to follow, and kept Tara quiet.

  “Not to jinx us or anything, but don’t you guys find it strange we haven’t seen any withered at all this trip?” Steve asked.

  Matt stopped abruptly and turned toward him. He didn’t say a word. He shook his head and pressed his lips together.

  Too late. You just did, he thought.

  Then he turned around and walked the last quarter-mile to the caves.

  The wind caves turned out to be a series of shallow holes carved into the side of rocks by the wind. They offered temporary protection from the elements and partial concealment from anybody or anything that might pass through the area. Matt had pictured deep, dark holes that would lead his team into a larger cavern much farther away from path and the wash, but got quite the opposite. These caves would have to do.

  They each found their own to settle in for the night. Steve and Tara found two caves that sat a few feet off the ground and directly across from the other in a cul-de-sac of several wider caves.

  Matt wandered off by himself into the darkness.

  They stowed their gear, but kept their rifles slung tight to their chests. Steve couldn’t help but notice how Tara’s sling caressed the space between her breasts and left him with an unfamiliar feeling of giddiness that fluttered through his body and warmed him to the core.

  He had never spent so much time around another woman, especially with all the time he spent out in the field. Now, with Tara on their team, he found himself wondering more about her and not as much about the mission alone. Her figure was lean. She kept her long, auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. Her face was stained with dirt, but her skin seemed to glow despite it. And she almost always smiled, even when she was unhappy with one of Matt’s decisions. Her presence made him float.

  Tara continued to collect firewood as Steve gawked at her and got a small fire lit in the bottleneck between the caves. He distracted himself and brought over two titanium mugs, set them in the fire, and poured water into them to boil. Once they came to a boil, Tara stuffed some pine needles and dried berries into each cup. The steam rose and filled the air with its herbal fragrance.

  In the distance, the sky flashed brightly with streaks of lightning, followed by the roaring boom of thunder. The pair sat down against the sandstone wall under Tara’s cave and listened as the tea steeped.

  “A heat storm. Doesn’t feel like it’ll rain,” Steve said softly.

  “Could be, the sky is covered in clouds. Can’t see any stars.” Tara paused. “One of the reasons I used to love coming out on these missions was because I could see the stars better. At camp, we always had lights burning. Here, it’s just me and the wild.”

  Steve smiled. “Yeah, it’s nice. If you watch long enough, you can see shooting stars. One night before you started coming out with us, I counted fifteen shooting stars.”

  The quiet of night hummed in their ears. Then, lightning crashed. The sky turned purple in an instant before it faded back to pure darkness.

  “God, it’s really dark tonight,” Tara said.

  Steve reached out and grabbed the cups off the fire. He pulled back and grabbed his hand. “Dammit, that’s hot,” he snapped.

  Tara laughed. “Silly, they were sitting on a fire. What did you think would happen?”

  Steve removed his rifle, then took his shirt off and wrapped it around his hand to grab the hot handles of boiled tea. He flexed his muscles as he worked and hoped she was looking at him the same way he’d caught himself looking at her.

  He reached back and handed her a cup. “Careful, it’s hot,” he said with a smirk.

  She accepted it graciously with more caution than his first attempt. Then, he grabbed his cup and set it down before putting his shirt and rifle back on.

  They sat in the still of the night and sipped their pine-berry tea. They listened to the crash of lightning and the boom of thunder roll ever closer.

  “Matt seems more stressed out than usual,” Steve said. “He’s always a bit anxious, but always on point. Never seen him walk out a room before either.”

  “I think this whole trip has us all worked up. This wasn’t exactly a success,” Tara said. “This wasn’t one of our supply runs. This was truly a survival mission. I mean, we lost almost everyone in that attack. Then, we had to leave the few people who did survive alone until we get back. I watched so many of our friends die. It was so…” Her words trailed off into silent sobs.

&nbs
p; Steve nestled himself against Tara’s body. She rested her head on his shoulders.

  “Yeah, this is different,” he said.

  Tara’s eyes welled with tears. She sniffled and tried to hide her face, looking down and indiscreetly wiping the wet from her now red and swollen eyes. But she was too late. Steve had already seen her.

  “It’s okay to let go, you know. You don’t need to hide the sadness,” he said. “Matt won’t let go, and you see what it does to him.”

  Tara sniffled and smiled, the rims of her eyes puffy and soaked. She took a sip of tea and sighed with a bit of relief.

  “Maybe it’ll rain,” she said to change the subject. She closed her eyes and relaxed against him. “I love the sound of rain. It helps me sleep.”

  As she rested on his shoulder, Steve couldn’t help but feel the warmth of her breath as she gently exhaled. Tiny strands of auburn hair tickled his face. Like two honeymooning lovers, they sat, quietly taking her in. He rested his cheek on her head and breathed her in. She smelled of earth, sage, and pine. It made his heart race like never before.

  He momentarily considered kissing the crown of her head. He might have, had a noise in the darkness not distracted him. It sounded like the fire had popped, but he didn’t see any floating embers.

  His body went still. As he focused on the area, he heard the noise again.

  The fire popped and sent a tiny ember in the air. Then, something cracked in the darkness, off the path they had come in from. His hand slowly slipped toward the pistol grip of his rifle, and his thumb flicked off the safety.

  Tara lifted her head off his shoulder. “What was that?” she whispered.

  Now, they both sat frozen in place, waiting.

  The sky flashed bright with light for only a half second and illuminated a horde of withered as they poured in. Thunder mixed with the rumbling of a thousand dead feet as the landscape faded to black.