Page 19 of Outbreak

He interlaces our fingers and pulls me behind him to the back of the truck. “We don’t know how the virus is transmitted, so don’t get close.”

I can’t believe my eyes. I can barely hear what he’s saying over the rushing in my ears. The man was very clearly dead before we hit him. But he wasn’t? He was walking in the middle of the road like a... zombie?

Then it hits me in the face. “Oh, my God. The smell.”

“Death,” he states, and something about the way he says it has my spine snapping straight and goosebumps erupting all over.

Death.

Something nudges at the corners of my mind—a memory—but it slips away as quickly as it came. I don’t have time to chase it down. I’ve got a very real, very dead problem to figure out.

“So the virus, it’s killing people and turning them into… what? Zombies? That’s insane,” I ask, shoving the weird feeling back down with all of the other things I can’t deal with right now.

“Itisinsane. But if you have a better explanation, I’m all ears,” he says, leaning down and picking up the pipe, poking at the man, and rolling him onto his back. He’s already decomposing—his skin is a paper-thin grayish-green.

“I–uh. I have no fucking idea,” I admit. “Do we just leave him here? Can’t we at least move him to the ditch? It’s not that far. Just so no one else hits him. He might be a dead guy, but I’m sure he wassomeonebefore this. It feels wrong to just leave him here.”

He looks like he wants to do anything but touch him, and I think I’m going to have to figure out how to do this myself when he finally agrees. “Fine. But you don’t touch him.”

He uses the pipe that’s already coated in the dead guy's decaying flesh to roll the body over to the ditch and lets him roll the rest of the way down the small hill.

“There. Is that better?” He asks, cleaning the pipe off on the grass. He walks to the truck and lays the pipe in the back. “Let’s go.”

Putting as much distance between me and the dead guy sounds like a really good plan. Even though I have no idea where we are going or what he wants with me, he’s made it abundantly clear that my safety is a priority. So, kidnapped by a protective psycho might not actually be the worst place to be when the world tells you to ‘fuck off.’

CHAPTER 16

Ghost

When we get back to the truck, I decide to keep going on the same route I’ve been on. If we run into danger, then I’ll recalculate. I don’t know where that man came from, and adding unnecessary miles to our trip when gas might be a problem soon is not the best idea.

A ‘Welcome to Mississippi’ sign looms up ahead, and Rue doesn’t miss it. I could blindfold her if I really didn’t want her to know anything, but after what we just witnessed, I don’t want to do anything that could put her in danger. I want to punish her, not get her killed.

“So. Mississippi?” She asks nonchalantly, digging in her gummy worm bag and popping another one in her mouth.

“You don’t miss a thing, do you?”

“Nope. So what’s in Mississippi? Is this where we’re going? What’s the plan here?” She’s like a little child asking their parents, ‘are we there yet?’ a thousand times.

“The plan is—” I say, snatching the worm dangling from her fingers before she can inhale it. “—to get to where we’re goingwithout strangling the life out of you for asking the same damn questions over and over again.”

“Or you could just answer my fucking questions,” she mutters as I toss the stolen worm in my mouth. She pulls her legs up into her seat and criss-crosses them in front of her. “Fine. But I need some real food soon. If you’re going to keep a bitch hostage, you could at least feed her.”

My stomach chooses this moment to rumble its own discomfort. She’s right. We aren’t going to make it on the little supplies I packed, sour candy, and energy drinks. We’re going to have to stop for actual supplies here soon and stock up on enough to make the trip to Georgia.

“We’ll stop in the next town.” If it’s still standing, I want to add, but I keep that to myself. She hasn’t seen everything I’ve seen. There’s no point in trying to explain it to her. She won’t believe me unless she sees it for herself. That’s why I made her get out and look at the guy we hit. This—whatever it is—isn't something you just blindly believe. You’ve got to experience it firsthand to even start to process what is actually going on.

A headache is already forming behind my eyes at the thought of taking her out in public. Not only do I have to worry about the virus, but I’ve got to keep her from running off and getting herself killed trying to escape. Though now that she has an idea of what we’re dealing with, I can’t help but wonder if it makes her want to stick with me. The idea of being needed by her does funny things to my chest that I’m too proud to admit to her.

The sting of her betrayal still lingers in the forefront of my mind. And while I haven’t even fully gotten started with her punishment, I’ve let it slip to the back burner in light of recent developments. Punishing her is not as important right now when our lives are on the line.

All I’ve ever wanted was her. Since the first time I laid eyes on the short little pixie dressed in black, standing across the fencenext door. I stayed away for too long already. I should have come back when she turned eighteen and taken her away with me, whether she liked it or not.

I’m not going to risk losing her now. I just got her back. And maybe that makes me delusional. Maybe she won’t want anything to do with me when I take this mask off and show her I know exactly who she is. She lied back then for a reason. Maybe she never wanted me at all. Too bad I’m not going to give her a choice anymore.

She can love me or she can hate me; she just can’t leave me.

The next town we come to sits next to the Mississippi River. It's so small, I’ve never even heard of it before. There’s not much to it. The best part is it doesn’t seem to be affected by the virus. There’s a small diner next to the water that has my stomach roaring to life and demanding attention. In all my travels for work, there’s something to be said about little hole-in-the-wall food joints.

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