Chapter Eight
Through Thicket and Thin

Abby had to pee in the worst way, the urge incessant and she'd been putting it off so long that she actually thought she might piss herself. Nature's call had morphed into something loud and obnoxious, like a tornado siren blaring out from her bladder. But peeing meant having to stop and find a place in the middle of the woods where she could drop her pants and make herself even more exposed and vulnerable than she already felt. She tried to ignore it.

She'd been walking for ages, second guessing herself the whole way as she tripped through the thick underbrush. The directions from John were still fresh in her mind, she'd double checked the written directions at least a dozen times and she knew logically she was still on the right track, or at least close enough that it didn't make much of a difference. She also knew logically that if she wanted to, she could veer off to her right and keep going in a straight line and eventually find her way back to the highway she'd originally been on. None of that helped with the oppressive feeling of being hopelessly lost and hunted as she kept pushing tired muscles up the steepening slope.

She still really, really had to pee. There was nothing else for it. She'd been walking for hours and though she was probably getting close to town she simply couldn't wait any longer. Plus, she knew it was at least slightly safer copping a squat in the woods than stumbling around trying to find a toilet in a place that had a lot more people and a lot higher chance of having crazy, not-people trying to eat her.

Abby stopped after banking the top of the hill, heaving and doubling over as she waited for noodle legs to turn into something a bit more solid. She shrugged off the back pack, and that was a relief she didn't know she needed because as soon as the pressure from the straps let up, the raw bruising on her shoulder that stretched down across her collarbone made itself known. She groaned, trying and failing to rub the soreness out of the area as she looked all the way around for several long moments before picking a spot where she could take a leak.

Peeing outside was a skill that she had never quite mastered and it came as no surprise that she got some piss on her pant-leg. It wasn't much, just a dribble but it added another level to the feeling of filth that seemed to coat her. She was hot, sweating and her shirt was stiff in places from where the sweat had soaked it from working all day and running for her life half the night. The fresh sweat at least didn't have that old, cheesy smell that reminded her of high-school gym class and lockers full of sweaty clothes that never seemed to be washed often enough. Worst was the old, meaty reek of the hard, brownish-red crusted spots where spatters of blood had stained the once white tank top. And now she had piss on her pant leg.

With her pants buttoned back up, Abby made sure her guns were in order on her belt. With the .45 hooked in easy reach on her hip, her .38 was hanging over her right butt-cheek, still in easy reach if the worst happened and she ran through all the preloaded ammo for the other handgun. It was hard to imagine that she would, that she'd get in so much trouble that two mags and 16 rounds wouldn't cut it. But with the way things had turned out for her so far, it was worth the discomfort of it digging into her lower back under the weight of the backpack.

She stretched out the bathroom break for a few more minutes, long enough to shove a banana down her throat and chug half a bottle of water. It didn't touch on the real problem of her exhaustion but it made her feel a little more fortified. It wasn't food or rest keeping her going anyways. At that point, the only real fuel she had in her system was resolve, and that was exactly what made her shoulder her bag back up and start moving again.

Something moved through the brush and she froze, listening as hard as she could and huffing through her nose when she saw the squirrel skittering around at the base of a tree a few yards away. It took a few minutes for her heart to stop hammering as she pushed forward, trying to tell herself to stop jumping at shadows. But she knew she wouldn't, couldn't. She was alone out there and that on its own was enough to make her nervous.

Abby's car had broken down on her a few months earlier, way out in the sticks where the houses were so far apart there was no telling how long it would be before she came across another human. At the time, she'd been terrified. It had been late, close to midnight and out that far in the boonies she'd not had even a blip of cell service. She couldn't decide if her fear then had been ridiculous or if she had not been scared enough. It hadn't been that far back and she'd already been hearing about some of the riots that weren't actually riots but maybe dead folks going around eating live ones. At the time she'd been jumpy, scared – looking over her shoulder constantly and using the not-very-bright LED flashlight to light up the trees on either side of the road in an attempt to catch sight of something or someone that might have been stalking her as she moved on foot down some winding back highway to try and find a phone. Her imagination had conjured up some weird shit that night. At one point she'd been certain she'd seen a dark, crouched figure wearing a kabuki mask.

Walking through the woods by herself in broad daylight when she knew there were real, flesh-eating monsters wandering around made the last trip seem like a giant joke. Granted, there had been real danger before. As a woman, the last place she wanted to find herself was alone and stranded somewhere she didn't know, with people that may or may have not been friendly. Walking up and knocking on a stranger's door in the back woods of Southern Missouri in the dead of night was perhaps the single most terrifying thing she'd done in her twenty-four years, until that was replaced when she drove up on a car-crash and had to shoot a man that wasn't a man in the head.

There were real monsters out there now.

She had to be getting close to town. The going was slow, but even then Abby knew how fast humans moved on their own two feet. Three miles an hour on average – she was probably making less than that since she had to fight her way through brush and side-track to get around big patches of those damned invasive thorns that littered the area like an outbreak of plant-herpes. But even with the slow pace, she'd easily been walking for over three hours without stopping. The sun was almost straight up, beating down on her because it was still early enough in the year that the leaves were not fully grown in. That ought to put her at the tail-end of her hike through the woods.

John had said it was about eight miles in a straight shot. She had to be almost there.

Sure enough, Abby hadn't been slogging for much longer when she found her way blocked by barbed wire. It was a relief in one way – it meant she'd come to the end of the National Forest and was that much closer to town, but it also meant she was about to cross over onto someone's property. There was a possibility she would end up facing a pissed off homeowner with a shotgun, or the residents might be the sort to have her over for dinner. That was the country gamble, one she wasn't willing to place bets on. She wasn't willing to place her money on her own sense of direction by trying to find her way around, either. Hopefully, she'd get through to the highway without being caught.

She dropped her pack over the other side of the fence and wrenched on the wire to test it. It was mostly tight, not enough sag for her to dip it down to step over but just enough give that she could lever the topmost wire up so she could climb through. It took some contorting to get through it without nicking herself on the rusted barbs and she wasn't able to avoid the spikes snagging on the thigh of her too-loose cargo pants as she crouched through the wires. Once the fabric was caught it became a weird balancing game, trying to shift enough to get free without catching her skin and she wobbled, corrected too much and the top of her shirt got hooked as well. Her patience didn't last past that and she wrenched herself the rest of the way through the fence. Long, stinging lines stretched across her back, but her leg was fine. The pants were torn a few inches down from the crotch.

Abby picked up her bag and kept going.

On the other side of the fence, the trees thinned out into a wide pasture. There wasn't a house in sight, but Abby was sure to give the roving herd of cattle plenty of space as she trudged across the open field. They watched her as she passed, a few of the younger calves skittering further away but not getting so antsy that she had to worry about an angry bull coming at her. On the far side of the pasture, she battled another barbed-wire fence.

The grass was grown up nearly to her hips there, riddled with weeds and sticker bushes and the brush was so overgrown that she didn't have any warning that the dirt road was there until she was tripping into the overgrown drainage ditch. She managed to catch herself before she went down complete, only turning her ankle a bit and her work boots braced her leg enough that it only ached a little bit afterwards. Cursing to herself, she heaved up the uneven bank onto the road and spent a few minutes staring down in either direction. It was rough and bumpy, poorly maintained – it was probably a private road. After a few more minutes of looking back and forth, she started following it to the left where it seemed to curve around back towards where she was mostly certain the highway was supposed to be.

It felt like she was going much slower now that she was on the road, partly because she wasn't surrounded by trees any longer and anything she passed that marked the distance inched by at a snail's pace but mostly because she fucking hurt. Her progress seemed like a slow drag, like she was trudging through mud or water and her muscles seemed to think that was exactly what she was doing if the throbbing in her calves was any indication. She was reaching that point towards the end of her rope where she was just trudging through because she had to, where her muscles were pushed too far and her steps were smaller because she didn't have the energy to keep up the pace. Heavy, clumsy – she tripped a bit on a rough patch on the road that shouldn't have given her any trouble at all, just a slight misstep because she hadn't stepped high enough to clear the edge of the pothole.

It took a while, but Abby caught sight of a house at the end of the long stretch road, at the edge of another stretch of pasture that was dotted with a separate herd of cattle. It was tall, set partially into the hill so the bottom story was half underground. There was a grey pickup truck parked out front, closer to new than to old judging by the design and the unblemished paint job. Abby kept her eyes on the place, picking out more details as she slowly got closer. There was a bunch of chintzy, plastic playground stuff around the side of the house and the windows were mostly covered by lacy curtains. One of the curtains shifted a bit, but she didn't see any other movement.

It was very quiet.

The air felt heavy as she kept walking down the road. Outside of the woods it was more open and breezy, but the sun felt hotter. It was open, exposed - she felt watched, but couldn't tell if there was a real source for it or just her own panicked imaginings. The same curtain fluttered in the same window and she was close enough to get a glimpse of an old man squinting down at her from the second story before the curtain fluttered back closed.

Nothing else happened and she just kept walking until the house was at her back. She had to slow down to pick her way over the top of a cattle-guard, through an open gate that spit her out on another dirt road that was wider, smoother and had proper drainage on either side. She followed it to the left because as best she could see it dwindled off to nearly nothing just a few hundred yards to the right.

There were other driveways along the road, some long and winding so she couldn't see what was at the end of them, but others were short and abrupt up to houses that were all still and silent and littered with people's stuff in a way that made it wrong that there wasn't anyone around to make the places seem lived in. Occasionally there was movement in windows, people peeking out and keeping watch but no one came out, no one bothered her and she decided to give them the same courtesy.

The next crossroad had pavement going off to the right and was lined with smaller houses and smaller yards. Abby followed the asphalt, knowing it was the surefire way to get closer to the highway. She kept to the middle of the road and gave in to her paranoia every so often, turning back to make sure the street was still clear and empty, kept glancing at the houses on either side of the road and the spaces in between to make sure nothing was going to take her by surprise. At one point, she saw something shifting around in one of the houses. She could see clearly through the big, bay window and all her focus went to the bumbling, jerky movements of a young man aimlessly shuffling around. She froze long enough to double check, to make certain her initial suspicion was right and it was one of those things.

There was blood smeared across his face and when he caught sight of her he was immediately pressed against the window and mindlessly trying to reach through it to get her, jaw snapping and face pressed to the glass. Abby didn't stay around to watch, instead forcing her aching thighs to work harder, driving calves that were starting to feel like mincemeat. The street dead-ended into a much larger, two-lane road with a center turning lane. The sign on the crossroad confirmed that she'd found highway 76.

Abby stopped at the highway, straining to look as far down the road as she could. She couldn't tell how far out she was, couldn't see anything recognizable that would give her a hint on how much longer she had to walk to make it to town. With a deep, heaving breath she shifted the straps on her shoulders so the bag wasn't cutting in quite as bad as before and started down the center lane. She didn't realize it for quite some time, but it was very strange that the highway was deserted so close to town. A good twenty minutes of walking later, she hadn't heard the sound of a single car and she'd reached the junction where the interstate crossed under the bridge on the outskirts of Willow Springs.

It was an eerie contrast that the same highway she'd abandoned the day before was empty when fifty miles east it had been so clogged and packed with cars and people that she'd not been able to access it.

A truck stop on the other side of the overpass loomed ahead, still and quiet and seemingly empty. There were a few cars in the parking lot and the doors were wide open. From what Abby could see, the place was abandoned, though. There was no human movement, just the random fluttering of a few birds that were scavenging around the fuel pumps. She kept her distance for a while before she started working her way towards the station. Through the open doors, she could see the shelves were mostly bare and the whole place looked kind of trashed, like everyone had been in too much of a rush to care when they were knocking stuff onto the floor and nobody had bothered to go through and clean up afterwards. A sign had been put up that they were sold out of gas and water, followed by a list that extended straight to the edge of the paper about everything else that was gone. All the liquor was gone apparently, and there was no more soda either. There was no movement inside from what she could see, but Abby was still cautious as she moved forward to the open door. She didn't hear anything as she stepped into the semi-dark building and looked around.

There was still some crap on the shelves, mostly the odd package of chips or candy and the weird odds and ends that were always sold at gas stations. There was broken packages scattered on the floor and the cigarette shelf behind the counter was bare.

She did manage to find a book of matches half-shoved under the cash register and she wasted no time lighting up a bent cigarette as she browsed what little was left for anything useful. It occurred to her in that moment just how fucking ridiculous it was that it had only been two days and here she was looting some trashed business for scraps of anything that she might need in the next few days or weeks or however long this nonsense was going to last.

It was weirdly satisfying when she uncovered a bottle of aspirin that had been kicked under one of the shelves, when she found the three-pack of lighters that had been sitting in with the discount dvds and the jackpot from her rummaging was the nearly full pack of cigarettes she found in the pocket of a jacket that was tucked behind the counter.

Then, just because there was no reason not to, she started shoving cd's into her bag. An unexpected wave of giddiness had her giggling. It wasn't actually funny, but in a stupid way it was hilarious, just like when she'd been helping out her cousin clean out her parent's stuff after the funeral and found the drawer full of sex toys. The situation was awful and terrifying and so overwhelming and so outrageous she didn't know what else to do. So she laughed.

At some point she couldn't stay standing any longer and ended up on the floor. She wasn't sure how long she spent sprawled across the linoleum, laughing so hard she couldn't catch her breath. Great, heaving laughter that made her stomach ache and then she was crying – loud, uncontrollable tears that wouldn't stop and made her lungs feel tight and constricted. She couldn't even see past her own, dribbling nose because the tears were hot and burning.

It took a long time to stop and even longer to get her breathing back under control. For a good long while, she didn't do anything but lean against the shelf and stare at the bit of window she could see over the top of the display in front of her, using the collar of her shirt to wipe away the tears and snot that were smeared over her face.

Footsteps made Abby snap out of her daze in the worst way. The pace was quick and sure, the thud-crunch of boots on asphalt getting closer. She heard the skid-clang of a shoe scraping over the metal threshold and the noise stopped abruptly after the first smack-thunk against linoleum. She tried to keep her breathing even as she shifted to try and get herself into a crouch. Her backpack caught on the shelf when she moved, a loud clang-twang as it plucked the edge of the metal rack like a guitar string and she gritted her teeth at the reverberating tone.

For a long second there was nothing, no sound of footsteps getting closer or further. Then, there was a barely-there snap and a metallic click.

"Wait." Abby's voice was hoarse, a croak as she scrambled into a crouch that would hopefully let her move quickly if someone started shooting at her. "I'm not – I'm not one of them."

"Stand up." The voice was clipped and sharp and came from the back end of the aisle on the complete opposite side from the entrance and Abby stared blankly at the uniformed, clean-shaven cop for a few seconds as she tried to decide whether or not there were two people or if he'd actually managed to move around the store that quietly and quickly.

"Weren't you just over there?" Abby gasped quietly. "I thought – I heard you over there."

The man had his pistol out, clutched in both hands. He had it aimed at the ground directly in front of him, ready to spring up at a moment's notice. She waited as he surveyed her up and down, eyes narrowing on the gun easily visible on her belt.

"I'm not doing anything – I'm just trying to get home." Abby explained quickly, trying not to sound guilty. "I've been walking for hours and hours and I just needed to take a break."

The man stared at her hard for a long time. "You hurt?"

"No." Abby shook her head to emphasize the point. "Just exhausted."

The man nodded, smoothly sticking his pistol back into the nylon holster. Without another word, he was moving back the way he'd come and this time she heard his footsteps down the next aisle over. She followed the sound with her eyes, mouth open on a question she would have asked if she could find the words. She saw him pass by the opposite end of the aisle again, moving back behind the register and starting to poke at the unpowered register and computer, ducking down to look around for something.

"What are you doing?" Abby asked, pushing to her feet. She winced, her muscles screaming at her how sore they were and it took her a minute to unlock them from stillness.

He didn't answer, intent on whatever it was he was looking for.

Unsure, Abby slowly walked closer to where he was getting more frantic rummaging around the counter, pushing stuff off onto the floor and actually tilting up the cash register.

"What are you looking for?"

The man looked up at her. "A key."

Abby frowned. "For the pumps?"

"Yes. This is the only place in town with a manual system. It's the only place that runs when the power's out." He started shaking the register as if it might pop open and reveal the elusive key just by the force of his frustration.

"They're sold out." Abby said stupidly. "Even if you find it, there's probably not any gas left."

The man huffed, a groaning, irritated growl of a sound and ignored her as he took a knife out of his belt to try and pry open the register.

"It'd be easier to jack fuel from a car." She continued, hoping she wasn't pushing too hard. "Can I – will you tell me what's going on?"

The man's eyebrows shot up, but he didn't stop his rummaging.

"I get that shit's going down." Abby explained quickly. "I got the gist that there's some virus going around and that people are going feral and eating people and whatnot. It's just – this happened so fast. Yesterday morning when I left for work, things were fine and I know there was shit happening everywhere but I don't get how it happened. I don't – they're evacuating the entire state. How did it go from a few riots to this since yesterday?"

The cop snorted. "They don't tell us anything. We just got orders from higher up. They've been playing it down, how bad it's been getting. We didn't get briefed until a few days ago and even then – there was no way we were gonna be able to go 'round and find everyone that got bit. There were too many people cropping up in the hospitals, people that don't bother with doctors. We thought – I thought it was drugs, at first. It's been happening for weeks."

He stopped prying at the register long enough to slam the machine against the top of the counter a few times. Abby flinched at the sudden loud noise, but kept listening as his voice cracked. "It was just a few cases, here and there. We started getting calls about people going crazy and we'd get there and they'd be tweaking so bad they'd be eating each other. We thought it was drugs, something new that was coming in from down south. But it kept happening and getting worse and then there were people declared dead that were getting up again just as hopped up as the people that went crazy on them… It was the outdated equipment, faulty machines at the hospital, it was a malfunction – that's what we put in the reports. But it kept happening, kept getting worse and then we finally got some news from the feds. That was four days ago. After weeks, we got the run down and got the order to start quarantining people. Like we had the means to do that, like it wasn't already too far gone to matter."

He shook his head, staring hard down at the bent knife clenched in his hand. "The cities are safe. I'm trying to get people to the safe-zone. I got a bus-full of people I'm trying to send to Springfield and not enough fuel to get there."

Abby was silent for a moment, rubbing a knuckle into the center of her forehead. "You need diesel then?"

"Yeah."

"MFA – you try there?"

"It won't work without the power."

"They sell generators. Hook one of them suckers up, scrounge up a gallon or so of unleaded and get yourself as much diesel as you need." Abby shrugged, sticking her thumbs under the straps on her bag to try and get rid of some of the pain in her shoulders.

"That's…" The man gaped at her. "I would never have thought to do that."

Abby shrugged, moving towards the door. "Good luck, man. You got your work cut out for you."

"You're leaving?"

"I need to get to my family. Still have to get across town, and after that I got another five miles to walk. The longer I stop moving, the harder it is to get going again."

"Help me and we can swing out and pick them up before leaving." He countered, and there was a hitch in his voice. "Please. I need help. It's just two of us trying to get all these people out."

"I'm not going back towards the city." Abby said flatly.

"It's safe."

"You sure about that? How are they screening people? How many are they set up for? Can they even keep taking people? Because from what I saw, the highway was backed up straight to Seymour. Thousands of people on that one highway. Where are they putting everyone?"

The cop stared at her. "You came from there?"

"It was a mess." Abby scrunched her nose. "All lanes were completely packed. I had to take highway 76, and that was blocked by a rollover and there were a few of those ferals running around there and I passed a whole lot of them coming up through the towns."

"But – that's all there is left to do. To get people out to the safe zones. I've been sending folks there. My family headed out that way yesterday."

Abby winced at that. "You do what feels right. Running away to the city just doesn't feel right to me."

He was silent for a while, frowning at her and Abby shifted nervously, looking towards the open door and mentally mapping the quickest path through town and out to her house. It was going to take her at least two hours if she didn't hit any problems on the way. When she looked back at the still nameless cop, he was still staring at her.

"What?" She knew she sounded defensive, could feel the punch of guilt beneath her sternum. "I have to get home. I don't even – I don't even know if my family is okay."

He huffed. "Help me get fuel for the bus and I'll give you a ride wherever you need to go."

She scowled, thinking. A ride would be great. Fast, would save her a long trek – and it couldn't take that much time to fuel up a bus, right? Unless they were planning on hoofing fuel from the pumps to the rig in five gallon cans or some other dumb-shit thing like that.

"The bus got enough fuel to make it to MFA?" Abby asked, "Because if you're planning something stupid like lugging that shit five gallons at a time from MFA to wherever that bus is parked, you're on your own."

"There ought to be enough to get it there." He answered slowly. "They never let those things go completely empty."

Abby nodded. "Let's do this, then."