Chapter Six
Veronica swerved the electric vehicle’s
steering wheel to miss a lone, emaciated eater who’d wandered onto
the dirt road, a cloud of dust all that could be seen when she
chanced a glance in the rearview mirror. Her stash of weapons was
secured next to her on the floor of the passenger’s seat, all of
them save one gun with a silencer hidden inside the large, faux
leather bag she’d found at Victor’s. She’d left one gun out just in
case and set it on the seat next to her brother’s laptop.
Victor was currently otherwise occupied. He
was speaking to that giant of a man in a language she didn’t
understand. It was just as well. She needed to concentrate on the
road and get to the interstate as quickly as possible. She just
prayed I-77 north wasn’t filled with broken down cars. She doubted
that would be a problem anywhere near Apple Creek, but it would be
a definite probability the closer she got to Cleveland. Thankfully
she’d been born ambidextrous. She could steer with one hand and
shoot with the other if the need arose. So long as she didn’t
inadvertently drive near a swarm of eaters while being forced into
a position where she had to keep the car at a low speed, she
reasoned she should be okay.
Unfortunately, hungry reanimated corpses
weren’t her only concern. What remained of the living could give
the eaters a run for their money any day of the week in terms of
the havoc they wreaked. Nobody trusted anyone anymore. That fact
was the entire reason it had taken so many years to make it to
Apple Creek. People today had two choices: go it alone—with family
and friends you’d had and trusted before the plague if such a
miracle existed—or band together with other survivors and pray they
wouldn’t rob, rape, murder you, or worse.
Veronica’s father had taught his children to
trust no one. Even her brother, the same guy who’d refused to go to
target practice with her and daddy or learn martial arts under his
tutelage, had inherited their father’s severe skepticism of other
humans. A Navy Seal, daddy had seen the worst of humanity and
raised his children accordingly. Mom had tried to temper her
husband’s paranoid outlook on life, and it had worked to an extent
on Veronica, but not with Victor. Her brother was and always had
been as paranoid as they came. Considering the current alternative,
that had turned out to be a good thing.
Growing up, Veronica had been a daddy’s girl
while Victor had been a mama’s boy. Not that Veronica didn’t love
her mother or Victor their father. On the contrary, the Banks
family had been tightknit clear up until Michael and Julia Banks
had succumbed to the plague. When Victor had informed her of their
deaths…
God. There were no words to encapsulate her
grief or that of her brother’s.
She had wanted so much to hug Victor and, if
the situation allowed for it, visit their parents’ graves. For four
painstakingly long years she’d slowly but determinedly made the
trek from Los Angeles to Apple Creek. It had never occurred to her
she’d be on the road heading toward Cleveland and onward to the
Highlands almost as soon as she arrived. Yet here she was driving
toward the interstate, her parents’ final resting place still
unvisited by her and getting further away from her the more she
drove.
She knew mom and dad forgave her though.
They’d want their children to take care of each other and
concentrate on their mutual survival.
*****
Lachlan kept his gaze hooded as he watched
Veronica make her way towards this place called Cleveland in the
thing called a car. The lass seemed to be safe for the present,
which allowed him some semblance of inner peace.
“The road she’s getting on now,” Victor
explained in Gaelic, “is called an interstate where we come
from. It’s a road that will take her to Cleveland in the fastest
possible manner.”
He nodded to his back. “’Tis a boon,
that.”
All this waiting whilst being able to do
naught was jarring to his typically stoic mind and body. He again
found himself wishing he could retrieve the woman himself. Doing
nothing was not in Lachlan’s nature. Doing nothing was not how a
mon became laird of Clan Gunn. Here, in his time, Lachlan was as
close to being a king as the Highlands kenned. He was accustomed to
getting his way, whether by force or no.
He wanted his bride and he wanted her now.
More than aught else, he conceded, he desired her safety. The wench
barely kenned he existed, yet none save mayhap Victor worried o’er
her everra move as did he.
She was becoming more than an obsession. She
was becoming a need.
*****
“Sis, there appears to be a group of what I
think are the living making their way towards I-77. Your paths
could cross so be aware.”
Veronica blinked, her attention coming back
to the here and now. The journey had been such smooth sailing for
the past twenty minutes or so that she’d allowed her mind to
wander. Oddly, it had meandered back to memories of that large,
brooding man who’d stood unmoving behind her brother. He was
handsome in a ruggedly masculine way—very tall, very broad, and
extremely muscular. Men just didn’t look like that anymore. And the
manner in which his dark gaze had all but seared hers…
“Thanks, Victor,” she muttered, forcing her
mind back to the mission at hand. Later, if she made it to the boat
intact and ended up at sea, she’d have time to take in the enormity
of time travel and mysterious Highlanders. One thing at a
time, she reminded herself. “But how do you know this?”
“Do you really want the answer?”
She frowned. Knowing Victor, no, she
didn’t.
“I didn’t think so.”
Her eyes were on the road and not on the
laptop, but even though she couldn’t see her brother she could
sense his amusement. She semi-snorted. He knew her too well. She
was like daddy—all action and little interest in artificial
intelligence mumbo jumbo. Victor was mom’s son—all science and
little else.
“I’ve got a gun on the seat beside me next
to your laptop. I won’t hesitate to use it on the living or the
dead if it comes down to it,” Veronica said.
“I can see the gun,” Victor mused.
She shook her head slightly. “Again, no, I
don’t want to know how.”
The next ten minutes passed in relative
calm. It wasn’t until she neared Cleveland that wariness set in. As
she had feared, the broken down cars were becoming more of an
occurrence the closer she got to the city. It forced her to slow
down, sometimes as low as fifteen miles per hour, to drive in
between and around them. Now she really had to pay attention—to the
living, the dead, and the increasingly difficult to navigate road.
She picked up the gun and moved it to her left hand just in
case.
“Nica!” Victor shouted. “A group of the
living are close by!”
Veronica quickly scanned the terrain. She
tightened her grip on the gun as she slowly wove around several
broken down vehicles. So far she saw no one. “Where? Which
direc—”
A lone man jumped in front of the car,
forcing her to a screeching halt. Her heartbeat quickened as
adrenaline rushed her system. Her breasts heaved up and down as she
aimed the gun at the stranger.
“Please,” the man begged, his hands now
raised, “Help us. Please.”
“Not gonna happen,” she said calmly, but
forcefully. Her gaze narrowed. The man looked thin, gaunt, and
dirty. She understood that life only too well, but there was
nothing she could do. Getting to Victor remained her priority.
“Back away from the vehicle or I shoot.” She hated that things had
to be this way, but there it was. It was the world in which they
now lived. “One…”
“Please! There’s a pack of eaters coming for
us!”
It was then that a woman and young child
appeared in front of the car. They looked as spooked and bedraggled
as the man. His wife and kid perhaps? She swore under her breath.
Veronica was untrusting and jaded, but not heartless. Fuck! She
didn’t know what to do. “Are they telling the truth, Victor?”
“They are,” he said on a sigh. “At the rate
the hoard is moving, they will make it to the interstate within
five minutes.” As if sensing her state of mind, her indecision, he
added, “The choice is yours, sis. I won’t judge you either
way.”
Her gaze and aim remained locked on the man.
“I know nothing about them. They could be marauders—or worse.”
“I know.”
“Please,” the man begged again, his voice
growing increasingly desperate, “just let us in the car until we’re
far enough away from them. We aren’t bad people, I swear it!”
So said everyone: the good, the bad, and the
evil included.
Veronica’s breathing was heavy, her green
gaze narrowed. She didn’t know what to do and had no time to
contemplate it—not if Victor’s five-minute analysis was true.
Growling under her breath, she put the car
into park. “Do you know how to drive?” she asked the man.
“Yeah. I mean it’s been a long time, but
yeah.”
“All of you put your hands up.”
He looked to the woman and child. He gave
them a small nod. Their hands went up like his. Veronica kept her
left hand gripped on the gun as her right hand reached for the
laptop. She slid over into the passenger’s seat, her back to its
window, and rested the computer on her thighs. “You’ll drive,” she
told the man, shooing him over with the gun. “The woman and girl
will get in the back seat through the driver’s side. Any deviations
and I shoot.”
He rapidly nodded. “Thank you,” he rasped
out. “No deviations.”
“The woman and girl will keep their hands
up. When they enter the car they will keep their hands visibly
empty at all times. You,” she told the man, “will keep your hands
up until they’re gripping the steering wheel. Again, no
deviations.”
“Agreed.”
The presumed family unit followed her
instructions to the letter. “Woman and child stay behind the
driver,” Veronica ordered. “No sliding over onto the passenger’s
side. In fact, child, sit in woman’s lap.” She didn’t know their