Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
ADRIAN
I’d been driving for several hours when, in the distance, I saw flashing lights.
Red and blue washed across my windshield as I drew closer. A patrol car angled across the road, steam rising from the hood. An abandoned sedan sat nose-first in a nearby ditch, hazard lights blinking uselessly, with no sign of the driver.
I slowed and rolled down my window.
Two officers approached.
One stayed back, hand resting near his belt, posture alert but controlled. The other walked closer, and I saw it immediately.
Sweat soaked through his uniform despite the breeze. His face was flushed, his eyes unfocused at the edges. He swallowed hard, jaw grinding back and forth in a strange manner.
“Sir,” the healthy one said. “We need you to shut the engine off and step out of the vehicle.”
“Why?” I frowned.
“Medical transport,” he replied. “Our unit is down, and my partner is sick.”
His partner was beyond any help a hospital might provide.
“I’m trying to reach my family.” This required a delicate approach. “Get in the back, and I’ll give you two a ride.”
“Please step out of the vehicle, sir.” He didn’t acknowledge what I’d said.
Dammit. I needed to get to Taryn, and these two bastards were going to delay that.
“I’m not refusing,” I said, trying to remain calm. “But I need some clarification on what’s happening here.”
The healthy officer sighed, “Our vehicle overheated. Dispatch isn’t responding. My partner has collapsed once already.” He met my eyes. “We need your truck.”
I considered my options, and none of them were good.
I stepped out of the vehicle, and he spun me around, cuffing my hands behind my back.
“Why are you cuffing me?” I should have mowed over these bastards.
“I’m sorry, I promise it’s only temporary, but I’ve seen some strange things today, and I can’t have you at my back without taking precautions.” His tone was apologetic.
This was my fault. The world was changing, and I had to get my head in the game. Fuck!
He sat me in the back seat of my truck, hands cuffed behind me. The sick officer climbed into the passenger seat, breathing hard, head tipped against the glass.
Officer Mills— I’d noticed his name tag earlier— glanced at me apologetically in the rearview mirror. “I’ll have you on your way soon.”
His partner groaned as we pulled away, “I don’t feel right.”
“You’re going to be okay,” Officer Mills said, a little too quickly.
I don’t think he believed it any more than I did.
The ride to the hospital was much longer than I’m sure it usually was. Cars were stalled or abandoned, with people inside either too ill to drive or having left them, headed to the hospital.
We drove for about 10 more minutes, weaving through traffic and pedestrians, all heading in the same direction, until the hospital finally came into view.
It was pure chaos.
People crowded the entrance—some sitting, some pacing, some screaming into their phones, frustrated by dropped calls.
They didn’t realize it, but things were about to get much worse.
The phone signal was going to become more sporadic before it stopped completely.
The electricity was only going to be steps behind. Life as we knew it was about to change.
Officer Mills parked haphazardly and got out. “I’m going to get help, hang on, Steve.”
He didn’t even glance in my direction as he bolted toward the hospital doors, shouting for help that I knew wouldn’t come. This was the beginning of the end.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
A hospital was the last place I wanted to be.
The sick officer sagged in the passenger seat, breathing loud and wet, sweat pouring down his face. His head rolled toward the window, then back toward me.
He turned his head in my direction and sniffed the air. “You smell…good.”
His voice was thick now, words sticking together.
This was bad.
I didn’t take my eyes off him. Things were about to go from bad to worse, and I had to be prepared.
Inside the hospital, glass shattered.
The sick officer convulsed.
His body locked up violently, spine bowing, his head slamming back against the headrest with a dull crack. Foam gathered at the corner of his mouth.
Then he went still.
My pulse spiked as his head lifted.
The eyes that met mine weren’t confused anymore.
They were fixated on me.
He raised his head and sniffed again, like a dog with a scent.
Then turned in his seat and came at me—clumsy at first, then terrifyingly fast—hauling himself over the center console with brute strength, teeth snapping.
I gritted my teeth and lifted my legs, driving both feet into his chest.
He slammed back into the dash, snarling—no words now, not a single sign of human recognition.
Pure animal instinct.
He lunged once more.
I kicked him again in the chest, forcing him back just long enough to move. I twisted in the seat, turning my cuffed hands toward the door handle. Sweat had made my hands slippery, but after a couple of tries, I managed to open it.
The door flew open.
I pitched sideways out of the truck, shoulder hitting the pavement hard enough to tear skin and knock the breath from my lungs. Pain flared white-hot, but I rolled with it, scrambling away as the infected officer tumbled after me.
He hit the ground and came up too fast—unnatural, jerky, already reaching for me with his mouth open and empty of sound.
I didn’t try to fight him.
I got the hell out of there.
Hands still cuffed, I sprinted toward the far end of the parking lot, vaulted a low concrete barrier, and dove between two parked cars as he slammed into the side of one, denting metal with his shoulder.
I kept moving.
A metal signpost loomed ahead.
I turned, backed into it, and forced my cuffed wrists up behind me, wedging the chain tight against the edge.
Then I pulled.
Pain flared—white and blinding—but the metal shrieked.
I pulled again.
The chain snapped.
Thank fuck, I was free.
By the time I turned back, the infected officer was still struggling to orient himself. His head was twitching, and his mouth opened and closed as if tasting the air.
I didn’t stay long enough to see anything else.
I sprinted back to my truck, yanked open the driver’s door, and got in.
The engine was still running, and the door I’d escaped through was open… I didn’t give a shit.
I drove until the hospital was nothing but a smear in the mirrors—not stopping for anyone or anything.
Only then did I register the damage.
My wrists burned where the cuffs had bitten deep, skin torn and swelling fast. Blood slicked the steering wheel in uneven streaks. I wiped my hands on my jeans and kept going.
Pain was easy to ignore, but my concern for Taryn was harder to dismiss.
The road deteriorated the farther I pushed—debris scattered across the lanes, abandoned cars angled wrong, doors hanging open as people milled between them with no clear direction.
A man leaned against the hood of a sedan, clutching his side as another tried to keep pressure on the wound.
An ambulance sat crooked in the median, hazard lights flashing, its driver bent over a woman on the asphalt.
He was too pale, sweating through his uniform, his movements slow and uncertain.
A minivan waited nearby with its hazards still blinking, a toddler’s car seat hanging out the open side door as if forgotten in a hurry.
A man tried to flag me down, but I kept going. Most of these people were beyond help.
Minutes later, I passed a gas station. Something about it raised red flags, but my fuel gauge was nearly empty.
There were too many cars and too few people milling around. A group of bodies gathered around the pumps, voices rising—not quite shouting, but close. It was the kind of shit you hear before chaos erupts.
I slowed because I desperately needed to fill up.
That’s when I heard the screams.
A man staggered backward from the convenience store doors, clutching his forearm. Blood ran freely between his fingers, splattering onto the concrete. He tripped over the curb and went down hard.
The woman who followed him didn’t slow.
She dropped onto him at a startling speed, her mouth open, teeth sinking into his stomach like she was biting into fruit. He howled, legs kicking uselessly as she tore away flesh.
Someone fired a gun—wild and uncontrolled. The shot shattered a window instead of stopping anything. The woman didn’t even flinch.
I pressed the gas and sped up.
A few feet farther down, I saw them.
Five people stood near the side of the road. Standing completely still and silent. Their eyes were milky, and their clothes were torn. One woman even looked like her leg was broken. Not a single one of them had a trace of humanity left in their face.
As my car passed, their heads turned.
Not one at a time, but together.
Five chins lifted in perfect unison. Five sets of clouded eyes tracked the movement of my car as it rolled by.
My grip on the steering wheel tightened.
I accelerated. I’d have to get gas somewhere else. If I came across more abandoned vehicles, I might be able to siphon some.
In the mirror, the woman with the broken leg peeled back her lips in a macabre smile. As the hair on my arms lifted, I didn’t look back again.
The alert chimed once.
I glanced down.
A single icon pulsed on the screen—one that I was more than familiar with.
No one was coming from either direction, so I took a chance and pulled over. Flipping the laptop open, I watched the map resolve. The satellite feed stabilized as the system recalibrated.
Taryn was quickly heading toward Ashford, but still had some distance to cover.
She didn’t have her phone since Ben rarely allowed it during punishment tasks.
Which meant the failsafe had tripped.
The necklace was doing its job.
I changed my route to cut down miles whenever possible, anticipating that I would have to navigate through traffic and crowds.
And God knows what else.
I closed the laptop and pulled back onto the road. I’d try for gas in the next town.
I knew Ben trained her to survive, and I had to trust she would. Otherwise, I’d lose my mind.
And right now, it was the best weapon I had.
I was startled as a man stumbled into the road ahead of me, arms raised.
I slowed just long enough to see that blood was smeared across his shirt and that his gait was uneven, his eyes unfocused. His mouth moved, but I didn’t give a single shit about what he was trying to say.
I swerved around him and accelerated.
In the mirror, he dropped to his knees, his hands clawing at the pavement when something emerged from the ditch behind him. I didn’t have time to stick around and see what it was.
Taryn was all I cared about.
My phone chirped with an incoming text.
School compromised. Multiple attacks. I’m barricaded in the lounge with students.
Fuck! I told him to get out.
I sent a quick text back—On the way.
I pushed the car harder.
Now I needed to come up with a plan to save Lucas’s ass.