The Immune: Omnibus Edition by David Kazzie

Author:David Kazzie [Kazzie, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Genetic engineering, sci fi, post apocalyptic, Science Fiction
Published: 2015-03-09T04:00:00+00:00

27

It was the hardest stretch on the road yet. Ninety miles from Salina to Wichita and they’d be walking nearly all of it through an astonishing automobile graveyard. It seemed that as the world had come tumbling down, the residents of each of those cities had concluded that the grass was much greener and healthier in the other. And so into their cars they’d climbed, sick, blind with panic, and in their cars they had died, along that stretch of interstate highway.

A few miles of clear road and then nothing but gridlock. Worse, the traffic jam appeared to be as wide as it was long, spreading off-road into the plains, into the grasslands, creating a sea of steel. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles glinted in the morning light, the shimmer of windshields stretching away to all horizons. They’d tried going around the jam, taking advantage of the big SUV’s four-wheel drive, but after a few miles bouncing through thick grasses with no end in sight, they’d abandoned the truck on October 1. But for a short dogleg about halfway between the two cities, the highway ran straight as an arrow. And it was along that long ribbon of asphalt that Adam and the others trekked for those ten days in October.

They averaged eight to ten miles a day through the Big Jam, as they’d taken to calling it. The cars were jammed together like sardines, leaving the narrowest of openings to negotiate. In some places, they’d had to walk topside, skittering from trunk to roof to hood and then back to trunk. And in almost every car, a sad story. A body or three or six. Families. Children. Mommies and Daddies and Nanas and Papas, entombed for all eternity. The bodies dried up and brown.

They made camp early on the seventh day, agreeing that they could use some extra rest, some extra time just doing nothing. As had been their habit, they scoured the vehicles for supplies first and then pitched their tents wherever they could find enough room. The cars were treasure troves of supplies. People had packed well for their final road trips - protein bars and bottled water and medicines, as though any of that could’ve stopped Medusa’s relentless march across the globe.

When they were settled in, Freddie walked the perimeter while the others sat around the campfire. It would be a chilly night, and Adam made a note they’d need to stop for more cold-weather gear when they made it to Wichita. God knew how long they’d be walking. Just a few feet clear of the fire’s reach and the night cold gripped hard. Amazing, he thought, the logistics involved in this trek. How their forefathers had done it, without SUVs and Gore-Tex and reliable guns, he’d never know. Just cut from different cloth, he suspected. Tougher cloth.

Max sat across from Adam, the boy’s face blank as he scarfed down his dinner. Adam smiled as he watched the boy eat; Max was possessed of a teenage appetite that would not be denied, apocalypse or not.

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