Free Gray (Book 1) by Lou Cadle Page A

weakness. It did her more harm than good.
    She passed more cars. Some has desiccated bodies in them. None had intact seats to serve as a bed for her, so she trudged on. Finally, the rain ended. She marched down the line of the road until the light began to fade. She stopped at a big pickup truck with plenty of space beneath. She crawled under it and popped open a can of tuna fish in oil, eating the fish and drinking the oil, scraping every drop of oil out with her finger. Huddled under the shelter, she fell asleep.
    That night, her sleep was broken by nightmares. Every time she tried to wake herself, she felt as if she were swimming up through mud, and before she could reach the surface of wakefulness, sleep pulled her down again like an anchor, into the sludge of another bad dream.
    One dream was like a secret agent movie. In it, she was a World War II spy who had volunteered to smuggle a backpack full of raw liver across England. She arrived via train at an underground station and climbed stairs to the surface. There, people dressed in period clothes and hats hurried by her. From out of an alleyway, a gang of feral cats leapt on her, trying to get to the liver. Coral fought them off, but her blouse was shredded by their claws. It fell from her in tatters, leaving her naked. Passersby glared out of the corner of their eyes at her bare breasts but no one confronted her or offered to help.
    When the morning came, her muscles ached. Mud was caked on her face and arms, and her eyes felt painfully dry, as if they had been sandblasted during her sleep. Mercifully, the rain hadn’t started up again. She forced herself up.
    Midday, she reached a metal sign that, while scorched, offered her up the name of the town: Mill Creek. Her heart buoyed by hope, hope of food, hope of shelter, hope of human company, she went on.
    Occasionally a highway sign still stood, giving speed limits that no longer applied. Coral moved through the ghost world, her shoulders stinging under the backpack straps. She ignored the pain and moved on, hoping to come to a thriving town and so to an end to her journey—or at least a comfortable rest stop before she moved on.
     
    Other buildings appeared out of the ashen air, some burned to the ground and others, those made of brick, stone, or concrete, partly standing. Some had burned husks of cars in front. The fire had swept through everything, shacks and mansions, BMWs and flimsy Korean compacts, with impartiality, a purely egalitarian force.
    Yet nowhere did she see signs of living people—not a boot track, not a sound of voice or motor or a distant hammer striking a nail. It was as if some strange alien wave had come and plucked away every human being, leaving a scene that seemed every bit as unreal as an abandoned sci-fi movie set. She wondered if there were groups of people nearby, huddled in some burned-out building or camped somewhere well off the road. It was possible she would pass within a half-mile of survivors and never see them through the thick air. The thought sickened her, that she might come that close and miss them.
    On the other hand, maybe she wanted to miss them. She thought of zombie apocalypse movies and how civilization decayed so quickly, leaving cannibals and violent madmen. The thought almost made her turn around and leave the town. But she had to try. She had to go forward.
    The truth was, she was lonely. And without people, she thought her sanity would soon slip away. She needed people, needed at least one living person to link her to the old life, to the old reality she had known and so taken for granted. Someone to talk with, to laugh with, to share a scanty meal with. She’d trade half her food for one evening’s company.
    She began looking inside the larger buildings’ ruins, hunting for canned food, but her luck didn’t lead her to a supermarket.
    Night fell before Coral came to the center of town. She bedded down for the night next to the blackened shell of a brick house