Free Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed by Shawn Chesser Page B

pulled
straight and the school bus flashed by in his left side-vision, while the
ground-hugging shrubs and Jersey barriers bordering 39 blazed by in his right.
    Once clear of the choke point, Cade risked a quick glance
over his right shoulder. Barely visible, even from his elevated vantage point,
the prone dead looked small and inconsequential. Whether they had or had not
seen the truck turn onto 39 was the sixty-four-thousand dollar question. Even
if they had, thought Cade, he doubted the seemingly aware among them would
remember enough to hunt him after the thaw. Which could be a day, a week, or
longer. At any rate it amounted to an unknown window of time that the Almanac
didn’t mention and led to another thought that really set the gears in his head
to spinning.

Chapter 9
     
     
    Less than a mile southeast of the 16/39 junction, Alexander
Dregan was fighting off sleep, the battle made all the more difficult by the
layer of snow shrouding the windows and the soothing melody filling the cab
compliments of the Kenwood head unit and strategically placed woofers and
tweeters. One thing the kid did right.
    He rubbed his eyes then started the wipers moving. Not
wanting to roll the window down and get a lap full of snow, he banged a fist
against the driver’s side glass so he could see out, starting a mini-avalanche
cascading off the outside surface. He leaned over and cleared the passenger
window in the same manner.
    Dregan consulted both side mirrors, then flicked his eyes to
the rearview. Nothing. It was still only him on the lonely road. Parked
nearly equidistant between the old couple’s home and the hallowed ground he was
intent on visiting. The only place where he could think clearly. Perhaps it was
because when he was there he was away from the constant din of responsibility.
The gravitational tugging at him by his boys for approval, answers, permission,
and affection, the latter of which he didn’t know how to dole out—unless it was
Lena who sought it.
    But more likely the reason he felt whole where he had found
Lena’s lifeless form was because he could in a way sense her spirit there. In
fact, he’d made the pilgrimage there so many times over the past few weeks that
his older son had on one occasion even gone so far as to question his sanity.
Like a Muslim to Mecca—he was drawn. Maybe he was going crazy as the judge
had also insinuated to him days ago. But wasn’t the whole world? After all, the
dead were walking and wouldn’t stop. Their decay rate was agonizingly slow.
Some of the survivors he’d been trading with in the outlying camps were even
beginning to turn to cannibalism to survive. He had heard they were holding
lotteries. A morbid and deadly version of shortest straw in which the
loser wasn’t assigned some kind of unenviable task or forced to sleep on the
couch or forgo riding shotgun for the day. The unlucky loser became dinner .
    Savages , he thought, and threw a shudder at the
prospect of eating another human. With a reflux of acid tickling his throat, he
yanked his sleeve up and consulted his watch. Half past ten. Wanting to return
to the walls before noon in order to confront the judge before the big man
became too bogged down with hearing grievances and issuing rulings, he rattled
the shifter into Drive and started out slow, the vehicle shuddering as the
accumulated snow was packed down and forward momentum was established.
    To the west, riding low over the foothills and presumably
enveloping the Wasatch Mountains farther away still, the dark roiling clouds
scudded along at a rapid clip. He came to a short straightaway, briefly shifted
his gaze right and saw over the craggy red mountains a thin horizontal gash in
the storm, brilliant blue sky showing through it. But behind the brief respite
the break represented was another foreboding gray smudge.
    Directly ahead, before the State Route became Main Street in
the town of Woodruff, it made a sharp left and then a short distance later