Resurrection: A Zombie Novel by - (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📕

Hughes would have let her sit by the window, but he was a big guy and he couldn’t sit in the middle without crowding into the gear shifter. She had to sit crammed between him and Frank, but they weren’t going far.

Besides, he was the truck’s security detail. He needed to be able to shoot out of the window. The U.S. military certified his Mossberg 500 Persuader pump-action shotgun as combat-reliable. With the pistol grip kit, it worked well for law enforcement, as well, but it’s designed for home defense mostly and for close-quarters fighting. It’s not always great in the field, but it was fine indeed for fighting on two-lane roads through the forest.

“What’s your name?” Hughes said.

“Annie,” she said. “Annie Starling.” She put her face in her hands and leaned forward so her shoulders wouldn’t touch his or Frank’s. Hughes was grateful for that. She was covered in blood and might be infected. Dried blood, but still. Hughes’ white T-shirt and faded khakis were covered in all manner of grime, but he looked and probably even smelled brand-new next to Annie.

“I’m Levan,” Hughes said. “Levan Hughes. Most people just call me Hughes. This here’s Frank.”

“Hi, Annie,” Frank said and tipped his baseball cap. “Sorry about the scare back there.”

“Where are you taking me?” Annie said.

She was shaken up and afraid. Hughes could see that. He was used to making people a little bit nervous. He was a 240-pound black man—all muscle, no fat, and no bullshit. He didn’t smile much. Not everyone was cool with that when they first met him. Few people were, actually, especially small and vulnerable women like Annie Starling. He knew they weren’t afraid of his skin color, or at least not his skin color alone. Hardly anyone would even notice him if he weighed 160, wore a jacket and tie, and carried a folded-up New York Times under his arm. They were afraid of his size and his bearing. He knew how to kick the shit out of people, and that came across.

So he wasn’t the least bit surprised that Annie Starling cringed a bit in his presence, especially since he’d just shot at her.

“We have a safe place,” Hughes said. “We’ll take you there. But first we have to go shopping. We’ll get some things for you too. Some clean clothes and a weapon.”

Annie said nothing. She just leaned forward and twisted the ring on her right hand. It was on her fourth finger, but the wrong hand for a wedding band.

Hughes shifted his weight and leaned hard into the passenger door to give her a little more space. He felt bad for shooting at her. And she smelled bad. Everyone smelled bad now, but Annie Starling smelled worse than anybody.

“Do you know what happened to you?” Hughes asked her. He doubted she did.

I thought you were one of those things.

One of what things?

Annie said nothing.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Hughes said.

Annie said nothing.

“She must have amnesia,” Frank said. “Something real bad must have happened.”

“She’s sitting right here,” Hughes said. “She can hear you.”

He figured it was best to fill her in later. She seemed to be in no condition to take it all in at the moment. Kyle could explain everything when they returned to base. Hughes was not a great talker and never had been. Hughes was all about doing things and doing them quietly.

He’d been a bail bondsman up in Seattle. Before. He headed south toward Portland after he lost his family, but he doubted he’d ever get as far as Oregon now. Not in these conditions. Not without a helicopter. And he doubted anyone would be flying him anywhere in a helicopter anytime soon.

As they got farther from the I-5 interchange, the number of cars sitting on the road thinned out. I-5 was impassable in both directions. Because of the evacuations. People in Portland wanted to get to Seattle. People in Seattle tried to get down to Portland. Hughes shook his head when he thought of it. Just a panic response. When things got real bad, anywhere but here seemed like a plan. But small towns were better than big cities, the countryside better than small towns, and the wilderness better than anywhere.

Hughes had no particular reason to head south. Perhaps he should have bugged out for the mountains. He didn’t know how to survive in the mountains, but they were sure as hell less dangerous than what Seattle had turned into. Things were probably no better down in Portland or up in Canada. The entire world was infected. No place was more jacked up than India. Maybe a few island nations were doing okay, but that was it. Micronesia probably wasn’t affected, but how long could a string of minuscule islands in the South Pacific get by in a world by themselves? They could just go back to a fishing and coconut economy, he guessed. Micronesia actually wouldn’t be a bad place to be, now that he thought about it.

“When was the last time you had a meal?” Hughes said to Annie.

“I don’t know,” Annie said. “I don’t feel hungry. But I should probably eat. And I do feel pretty thirsty.”

Hughes reached under the seat and pulled out an unopened bottle of water.

“Here,” he said as he twisted off the cap and handed it to her.

She nodded and took it. And she relaxed a few increments. She seemed just slightly less afraid of him now.

Hughes wanted to ask whose blood was on her face, but he guessed she wouldn’t know. He thought about warning her that wetting her lips might remoisten the blood, that she might get some in her mouth, but it wouldn’t make any difference. She was either infected by now or she wasn’t, and Hughes was pretty sure at this point that she wasn’t. A person could only last a few hours at most after exposure to the virus, and if she’d been exposed in the past two or three hours, she wouldn’t have asked what things he was talking about.

“What on earth happened here?” Annie said. Frank swerved the Chevy around abandoned cars. Some had busted-out windshields. Some still had their doors open. The road was so jammed up that Frank had to spend most of his time driving clear off the shoulder and onto the grass.

Hughes sat silent for a moment. “Things have been like—this—for more than a month now,” he finally said. “You can’t remember anything?”

“I know who I am,” she said. “I remember my whole life. But I don’t remember any of this. Whatever this is. These cars have been here for a month?”

Hughes tried to see the world around him through Annie’s eyes. Tried and failed. There were too many incomprehensible things to take in. Wrecked cars. Abandoned cars. No moving traffic. No