Free Apocalypse Weird: Genesis (The White Dragon Book 1) by Stefan Bolz Page B

and drove on.
    That was the moment when she made the mistake. There were two ways to get to Bay shore. One was via Sunrise Highway and 231, which turned into Deer Park Avenue. From there, she could have turned onto Grand Boulevard which was a straight shot that ended one block from the industrial complex and Corbin Avenue. But Kasey decided to cross Sunrise Highway and drive up to Southern State Parkway. It was only one exit from there to get to Deer Park Avenue and Grand Boulevard. She had only ridden on those roads as a passenger, never as a driver. Like all teenagers, she’d rarely paid attention to where she was and most of the time was texting with her friends or checking up on her Instagram account.
    Were she a more experienced driver, she would have known that Southern State Parkway was a heavily travelled highway and major east west connector. When she got onto the ramp, two hours and twenty minutes after she had passed Sawyer Avenue, she didn’t know it yet. But less than a minute later, she almost crashed into the car in front of her. It stood thirty feet from the on ramp to the parkway, toward the right side of the lane. The driver had probably gotten onto the ramp when the blindness hit.
    Kasey couldn’t see that, for the next seven miles, the Parkway — from her location all the way to Islip Terrace — was packed with stopped cars, piled up cars, turned-over tractor trailers and the dead and wounded bodies of those who crashed when the blindness hit. She saw none of it. What she did see were several green shapes in front of her.
    By now, she knew they were car roofs. Her sight was limited, not only in how much she could see but also how far. After about fifty feet, everything was completely dark.
    But when she drove around the car and onto the Parkway, she realized that she had made a mistake. It dawned on her the moment she saw the green shapes ahead. There were fifty, maybe a hundred of them. Some stood by themselves, others must have crashed into each other. She thought of how terrifying it must have been for the drivers to suddenly go blind while going sixty miles an hour. And once they got out of their cars — if they got out of their cars — and walked a few steps, they might not have found their way back.
    Kasey stopped the Jeep and turned it off. For a moment, she sat there listening. It didn’t register at first that all she heard were birds and a few chirping crickets. Nobody screamed for help. By her estimation, it was around two in the afternoon. That meant it had been approximately four hours since the blindness hit. Where did everyone go? She decided to find out. The Jeep had a unique enough roof line that she thought she could find it again. And she thought that leaving both doors open might help.
    She grabbed the belt and holster from the passenger seat but decided not to take it with her and put it back down. She had no idea how to use the gun and trying to figure it out in the dark didn’t seem like a good idea. She took her baseball bat instead. It was aluminum, and her dad had insisted that she keep it in the car when he had given her the keys yesterday morning. A lifetime ago. At least she knew how to handle a bat.
    Kasey opened the door and got out. She walked around the other side and opened the passenger door as well. Strange. It looked from here as if most of the doors on the other cars were left open, too. She could make out the contours fairly well.
    She walked to the first car and slowly put her hand and arm through the open door. She touched the back of the passenger seat, the middle console and the driver seat. Empty. She did the same with the back row. Nothing. She went to the next car. The front doors were closed but the back doors were open. She felt the back seat. There was a backpack. A water bottle on the floor. She took it. She became aware of the flies while she drank from the bottle. It was the sound mostly. There were probably half a dozen in here.
    When she opened