Chapter Four
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VICTORIA DIDN’T MANAGE to get very far after fleeing her home last night.
Large mobs were fighting at all of the exits along the Hudson River.
She figured things would be just as bad to the east as well.
Flaming metal drums lit up the tunnels she’d scouted, making it impossible to sneak past the brawling crowds.
She’d prowled up and down the river, wishing she knew how to swim, or drive a boat.
Dawn arrived and she found herself at the northern tip of Manhattan. The Henry Hudson Bridge was blocked by vehicles in both directions. Someone was up high, sniping people for fun. She could hear him cackling every time he hit someone.
People were crammed onto the bridge, taking cover behind the vehicles. Most had suitcases and other luggage. They looked defeated rather than rebellious. Clearly, they weren’t about to root out the sniper and take him down.
“Screw this,” Victoria said and trotted back along the bridge. Few people spared her a glance. They’d hiked for miles only to find they were stuck here. There was no food, money had no value and they had nowhere to go.
Dense shrubs and trees lined both sides of the wide bridge.
Victoria picked up her pace. She ran until the structure was low enough for her to leap down into the shrubbery.
Crashing through the foliage, she backtracked to the water.
“Ew, gross,” she complained when she saw bloated bodies floating past.
Spying a white and orange plastic barrier bobbing on the edge of the water, she strode over and grabbed it.
“Perfect,” Vic said in satisfaction. She undressed down to her underwear and removed her socks and shoes.
She stuffed her gear into her backpack and placed both of her bags on the barrier.
While she couldn’t swim, she wasn’t a complete idiot in the water.
“Here we go,” she said and waded into the river.
The cold didn’t bother her as much as it did for normal people, which she was grateful for.
Holding onto the improvised floatation device, she kicked her legs to propel herself forwards.
“You can’t get away from me!” the sniper screeched angrily when he spotted her. He fired and hit the edge of the plastic barrier.
“Fudging shizbag,” Victoria muttered, kicking as hard as she could while angling away from the bridge. She turned the barrier sideways to shield her from view. A few more bullets slammed into it, narrowly missing her. She quickly crossed to the other side and slogged her way onto dry land.
“Made it,” she said in relief, then loped over to a large tree with her bags in hand.
She used it for cover to change into fresh underwear.
Squeezing the water out of her undies, she shoved them into a plastic bag she’d brought with her.
Using a t-shirt as a towel, she dried off and pulled her clothes back on.
A plan had come to her during her long night of prowling through the city searching for a safe way out. She’d seen a photo of the Adirondack Mountains in the window of a travel agency a few hours ago. It would be secluded and seemed like the perfect place to hole up in.
“It’s going to be a long journey, Vic,” she told herself. She’d stolen a map from a gas station and had worked out a route. “It’s about two-hundred and forty miles to the base of the mountains,” she went on. “It’ll take you about six days to reach it if you can run forty miles per day.”
She usually ran five miles a night without much trouble. Forty miles didn’t seem like too much, but it would wear her down if she didn’t fuel her body sufficiently. That meant she would have to forage for food fairly frequently.
“Try saying that five times fast,” she joked, then began jogging.
Her pace was slow and steady, since she had such a long way to go.
Vehicles clogged the streets leading to Manhattan.
It was a mystery why so many people had tried to reach the tiny island.
It would have been far smarter to head for rural areas like she was planning to do.
“People are fudging stupid,” she figured, wrinkling her nose at the stench of rotting flesh.
Bodies were scattered all along her route.
The survivors weren’t coping well at being left behind.
Most seemed to be trying to kill each other.
She’d had to take down over twenty fools who’d thought they could murder her, or worse.
Her first kill had been harrowing to say the least. Her mind skipped over it rather than lingering on the details.
Victoria had always known she was different from everyone else.
It wasn’t just her size and strength that set her apart.
She could anticipate what people were going to do.
It wasn’t like she could read their minds, it was more like she could foresee their actions moments before they did something.
“I’m a freak,” she said with a heavy sigh. Her mom had given her up for adoption when she’d been a newborn, so Victoria didn’t know who either of her parents were. She’d been in the foster care system her entire life, moving from home to home because she didn’t fit in.
Another quirk she possessed was the innate ability to know if people were good or bad.
She’d always been able to tell if her foster parents or siblings were going to be abusive.
One perk of being so big was that she couldn’t be bullied.
Victoria had always been a fighter. It had come to her as naturally as breathing.
It had also been the reason why she’d been moved around so much.
At fifteen, she’d decided she’d had enough. Too many of her foster fathers had tried to do inappropriate things to her. Breaking their fingers had always been a good deterrent. The authorities never believed her when she reported their transgressions, so she’d finally run away.
“That’s when my life of crime really took off,” she joked as she jogged down the sidewalk.
In reality, she’d always been a law-abiding citizen.
She’d bought a fake ID from a lowlife shizbag and had gotten a job as a bouncer in a nightclub.
Victoria’s size made her look older than she really was back then.
After a couple of years, she’d been spotted by a talent scout.
He’d watched her throw two men out of the club and had gotten her a job in pro wrestling.
“I miss it already,” Victoria lamented. She’d spent the last seven years working her way up the pro wrestling circuit to make a name for herself. Finally, she was at the top of her game and had been earning big money. “Then the world ended and now I’m a nobody again,” she grumbled.
Sensing someone to her left, she heard furtive footsteps, then a man came barreling towards her from behind a tree, snarling silently. An inch taller than her, he held his arms out ready to grab her.
Evil emanated from him like a palpable stench. Victoria didn’t even pause when he leaped at her. She grabbed his wrist and tossed him to the ground, snapping his arm, then stomping on his neck. His body jittered in its death throes as she continued running.
“Victory wins again,” she muttered, annoyed at how many bad people had been left behind. “Is everyone I run into going to try to kill me?” she complained, angling around a car that had veered off the road and had smashed into a lamppost.
Victoria kept up her steady pace and ran for a few hours before stopping. She broke into an empty house where she’d be out of sight for a while. Using the facilities, she was glad to at least have the use of a bathroom, even if the toilet didn’t fill back up with water now.
She sat down at the dining table to eat, noting dust was already beginning to settle on the furniture. Vic ate some energy bars and hydrated herself with water. She was just about to leave when she felt a prickling sensation in the back of her mind.
“Uh, oh,” she murmured, getting to her feet and slamming her mental door shut again. Just like at the East River, she could sense someone trying to pry into her mind. She let herself out through the back door, then sprinted away as fast as she could run.