Page 123 of Into the Mist

“No. We need to head east,” said Stella.

“Okay, east it is,” said Ford. “Stay close and try to be as silent as possible. The lack of electricity is on our side. Surprise is on our side. But don’t forget that Ron and Wes are armed.”

“Ron bled out in the courtyard,” Mercury said. “Fucking Amber discarded him like he was trash.”

“I thought she was a nightmare from the first moment I glimpsed her, but Ron’s no loss. One less goon,” said Stella. “Let’s go.”

Together, they moved quickly and quietly down the hallway to the front doors of the school. There they paused.

Ford slid Mercury’s backpack from his shoulders, handed it to her, and spoke softly. “I’ll go first. If anyone’s around, I’ll say I needed some air. If you see me go left instead of right, that’s because someone’s out there. Don’t worry about me. Just give me a few minutes to distract whoever it is, and then get to the park. I’ll circle around and meet you there.”

Mercury touched his arm. “Be careful.”

“Always, Bellota.”

The women waited in the shadows just inside the front doors and watched Ford expectantly. He walked to the middle of the sidewalk and made a show of stretching and yawning as he turned in a slow circle. There was no Suburban parked in front of the school. Nothing appeared to stir. In moments Ford was back. He took the pack from Mercury. “All clear!”

The women followed Ford outside. They took a right and walked briskly toward the park. Dawn was just beginning to turn the sky from coal to deep sapphire. The town was silent and dark. No lights glowed from any building. Nothing moved except the limbs of the trees in the chilly breeze.

Mercury felt as if she walked through a crypt.

The park was deserted. The strands of lights had been turned off, and the firepits gave off a feeble orange glow as wood embers slowly died.

In the shadow of the pavilion, Ford huddled them up and whispered. “The street that runs along the north side of the park there”—he pointed—“is B Street. If we turn right onto it, we’ll eventually come to the edge of town, where Willow Creek runs parallel to Madras. All we have to do is follow the creek north to where we left the truck.”

“I don’t think we should walk on B Street,” whispered Mercury. “That’s one of the main roads in town, and from what we saw today, they have roadblocks on the main roads.”

Ford nodded. “Right. We’ll cut through the neighborhoods that frame the street. Stay close.”

The neighborhoods that flanked B Street were deserted, dark, and utterly silent. Ford, with Mercury beside him, led them throughyards and across alleys as they wound around privacy fences and avoided anything that appeared to be a major street.

They found dead bodies. A lot of dead bodies, deflated and with their fluids drained away to leave limp sacks of fetid skin and clothes. Ford grabbed Mercury’s arm and pulled her back just before her boot sank into the flattened gut of what used to be a man. She had to press her hand against her mouth to keep from screaming.

The wind picked up as they got closer to the edge of town. It was cold, but not freezing, though the scent of rain was on the breeze. Finally, the houses gave way to scrub and a few ramshackle trailers. On their right was what looked like a roomy home with a neat yard and a broken sign that proclaimed that not long ago “Beeson’s House” had been a bed and breakfast. On the left side of the road was a scraggly park—and at the intersection that marked the edge of town, were two SUVs parked side by side, blocking the road.

Ford stopped and then silently backtracked before he whispered, “Let’s cross the street and cut through that park to get past the roadblock. I could just make out the outlines of playground equipment. That should give us some cover. On this side of the street, there’s nothing but scrub and sagebrush—nowhere to hide. Sound good?”

The three women nodded.

The little group sprinted across the street in twos—Mercury and Ford first, followed by Stella and Karen. Then they entered the park. They had to move slowly to keep from making noise or running into slides or teeter-totters, and it seemed to Mercury that it took them forever just to get halfway through the park.

“I can’t believe Ron’s dead.” A male voice Mercury recognized as the mostly silent Wes drifted to them from the road, and they froze. “As if we haven’t lost enough men.”

Another male voice answered, one Mercury didn’t recognize. “Hey, look at it this way: fewer men mean more women sniffing around after us. I mean, there are so many of them now compared to us that they’re in charge. Shit, we deserve some kinda compensation.”

“Totally agree with ya, bro,” said Wes.

Ford motioned for them to keep walking, which they did—even more slowly—until Amber’s voice broke the silence from only a few feet in front of them.

“You two are disgusting. As my mother often said, it takes a very good man to be better than no man at all, and neither you, Wes, nor you, Mitch, are good men. One of the many wondrous things this apocalypse has done is to finally put the entitled white man on the endangered-and-soon-to-be-extinct species list.”

Ford had put his hand up to stop them. He motioned for them to retrace their steps, but what Mercury had assumed was a short, squatty bush suddenly stood. As she pulled up her pants, Amber lifted her head and looked directly at Ford.

CHAPTER

37

“WELL, HELLO THERE.” Amber wiped her hands on her jeans. “Good thing I had to take a pee break, or you would’ve passed right by without us seeing you. That would’ve been a shame, wouldn’t it?” Then her gaze found Mercury, Stella, and Karen, and her pretty eyes widened. “What are you four doing out here?”