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Luke braked as the van ahead did the same. I leaned to the side and caught taillights flickering on every vehicle like a ripple passing through water.

Nobody honked their horns or lost their tempers. We just kept moving in a silent procession that grew longer and longer.

I kept thinking about Sadie, picturing her pacing and stressing about me. Wondering if I’d survived.

A short while later, the taillights on the van in front glowed again.

“Should we try to squeeze in a three-point turn?” Varesh asked. “There’s nothing coming. We won’t hold anyone up for long.”

Before anyone could answer, the line stopped dead.

Twenty-Six

luke

Islipped the gear shifter into park. We were almost touching the van’s bumper, and when I checked the mirrors, the hatchback behind had pulled up close. The girl in the passenger seat drew on her fogged window while the driver sat and stared, eyes vacant.

Engines idled around us, and diesel fumes leaked through the vents, thick enough to taste.

“What’s going on up there?” Tim unfastened his seatbelt and moved into the middle seat. “Is someone trying to do a U-turn?”

“No idea.” I leaned to the side, but the removal truck several spots ahead blocked my view.

“Maybe the main road’s closed,” Ava said. “What if this is as far as we can go?”

Varesh sighed through his nose. “If that’s the case, we’ll be waiting a long time for everyone to turn around.”

Warm air circulated through the car, and my hands stayed on the wheel. On our left were chain-link fences topped with barbed wire, and shipping containers were stacked three-high to our right.

So far, nothing about this trip had gone the way I expected.

Ava watched me closely. “Are you thinking about getting out?”

“Not yet.”

Had I missed something? A driveway? A gap in a fence?

She stared at me a beat longer, then combed her long hair back into a ponytail and secured it with a tie from her wrist.

Tim leaned closer to Varesh, checking the road on our side of the car, then the ground through his own window. “It’s boggy on both sides.”

I sighed. “Yep.”

A driver’s door opened three vehicles in front of us, and a man in a red flannel shirt stood on the side step of his Landcruiser, looking toward the bend in the road.

A teenage girl climbed onto the back of a dual-cab ute for a better view.

Farther along, a grey-haired woman stepped out beside her car.

Like the taillights, movement spread through the queue, and a handful of people appeared, then ten. Twenty. Minutes later, the view ahead and behind became more human than vehicle.

Two women hugged as if they’d reunited after travelling in separate cars. A man gulped water from a plastic bottle.

No one shouted or scurried back into their cars in a panic. Either they couldn’t see far enough ahead to locate the problem, or it had nothing to do with the infected.

I killed the engine. We’d lose heating but save fuel, and there was no telling how long we’d be stuck here.

A few cars still idled around us, the cry of a seagull cutting through the noise. A woman’s voice drifted through the windows as she talked to a man nearby about their next move.