10. Snow, Corpse, Denver
Snow, Corpse, Denver
The sky hung low and heavy, promising snow.
Jay's breath visable as he studied it, his practiced eye reading trouble before it arrived.
They still had miles to cover before Denver, and the timing couldn't be worse.
"It's gonna make things slow going," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Road will ice over fast."
Seth followed his gaze upward but said nothing. He didn't need to. The cold had settled into his body weeks ago, blending with fatigue and grief into something he carried everywhere now, something that never quite let go.
Then Jay's eyes landed on the corpse.
The infected lay exactly where Seth had dropped it the night before, half-frozen, its limbs twisted at unnatural angles, one hand still reaching upward.
Seth forced himself to hold his gaze on it. Someone had laced the shoes—double-knotted, the way you'd do for a child or a long walk—and that small, careful act was the thing he couldn't get past. A tremor slid through him; he couldn't say whether the cold caused it.
Josie and Layla remained inside the SUV.
Josie hadn't allowed the little girl to step outside this morning, not with the corpse so close, and she'd pulled the sunshade down so Layla wouldn't accidentally glimpse it.
The girl sat tucked beneath a blanket with her crayons and notebook, blissfully unaware of what lay twenty feet from her window.
Good call, Seth thought. Layla didn't need new nightmares. God knew she carried enough old ones.
"She doing alright?" Jay asked, his voice low as he nodded toward the SUV.
Seth gave a noncommittal gesture, though his jaw tightened. "Josie said she's fine. Didn't see anything." He exhaled slowly, watching his breath dissolve into the gray air. "Doesn't mean she's okay."
Jay just nodded, his own gaze drifting toward the SUV.
Cara emerged from the second SUV, zipping her jacket against the wind, her bow slung across her shoulder. She glanced at the corpse and grimaced. "We leaving it there?"
"Not worth the risk," Jay said. "We don't know how long the virus stays active after death."
Seth cleared his throat, the memory of last night pressing forward. "When I shot it... it didn't seem infected at first. It moved slowly, confused. Almost like it had already started dying on its own."
Cara tilted her head. "Then why was it still moving?"
Seth turned the thought over as he spoke. "Or different stages of infection. Some stay upright longer, some don't."
Jay frowned, working through it. "Maybe the ones who turn fast burn out fast."
"And maybe the ones who linger have bodies fighting a losing battle," Seth added. "Compromised, but not gone."
The theories hung in the frigid air, unsubstantiated and useless—words thrown at a problem they couldn't see, a search for patterns in the chaos.
A gust of frigid wind whipped through the clearing, rattling the bare branches and making the corpse's sleeve flutter. Inside the SUV, Layla laughed at something on her notepad, and Seth found himself staring at her through the windshield for a moment too long.
"We should move," he finally said. "If the snow hits before we're on the highway, we'll lose half a day."
Jay nodded. “Lets Break camp."
Cara headed for her SUV while Jay rounded the front of the lead vehicle to warm the engine. Seth lingered, his gaze fixed on the double-knotted shoelaces. That small, human detail offered no answers, only a quiet, unnerving silence.
Behind him, the SUV door opened. Josie climbed out, pulling her coat tight against the wind. Her eyes flicked immediately to Seth, then to the corpse, then back to him again.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah," he answered—a reflexive lie, worn smooth from use.
She didn't press. She simply stood beside him for a quiet moment, close enough that he could hear her breathing, both of them watching the gray sky lower itself over the world.
"Let's get moving," she said at last.
He nodded and started toward the vehicles. Behind them, the dead thing lay motionless in the frost, its clouded eyes fixed on a sky that no longer held any meaning for it, while the storm rolled steadily closer.
They pulled back onto the highway with Jay and Cara leading in the first SUV, their taillights glowing faintly through the gray morning.
The lights occasionally vanished behind curtains of blowing snow before flickering back into view.
The storm hadn't quite reached them, but the wind carried its promise in every gust.
Inside the second SUV, silence settled between Seth and Josie—not uncomfortable, just unfinished. The tires rumbled over cracked pavement while Layla sat in the backseat, coloring with the fierce concentration only children seemed capable of summoning.
Seth kept one hand loose on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
"So," he said after several miles, "where exactly are we taking you in Denver?"
Josie smiled faintly without turning from the window. "It's not Denver itself. It's a little ranch my parents own between Denver and Boulder—kind of in the middle of nowhere, honestly. You'd miss the turn if you didn't know to look for it."
She watched an abandoned neighborhood drift past, its windows dark and its driveways empty.
"I figured if you all got me to Denver," she continued, "Layla and I would have to try and manage the rest of the distance ourselves."
Seth's brow furrowed. "No."
She blinked and turned toward him. "No?"
"We're taking you all the way."
"Seth, you don't have to—"
"We do." His voice was flat, the decision already made. "I'm not dropping you and your daughter in the middle of an apocalypse and wishing you good luck."
A corner of her mouth lifted despite herself. "I wasn't asking you to."
"You were expecting it."
She didn't argue. He saw the truth in the way her shoulders relaxed, just a fraction—the release of tension she must have been holding for miles. She'd expected to be left on a roadside and hadn't dared to hope for more.
"I appreciate it," she said.
Seth gave a small shrug. "Seems like the decent thing to do."
For a while, neither of them spoke. Outside, the landscape opened into fields where frost had settled into the furrows of old tractor tracks.
A few fence posts remained upright, the rest gone or leaning, and a barn stood with its roof punched through in the middle, the gap wide enough that whatever had been stored inside was long past saving.
"You grow up there?" Seth asked eventually.
Her entire expression softened, and warmth crept into her voice.
"Yeah. My parents bought it before I was born—horses, cattle, a few chickens.
My mom always kept this ridiculous vegetable garden that took over half the yard every summer.
" She laughed quietly at the memory. "When I was a kid, I swore I'd never live somewhere so isolated. "
"And now?"
Her shoulders slumped slightly as her eyes tracked the empty fields. "Now I'm hoping it's isolated enough."
Seth understood without needing more. Isolation had become security, and distance from other people had become the closest thing to safety anyone could find. He nodded once.
"You think they'll still be there?"
Her fingers tightened together in her lap, knuckles paling.
"I don't know." The honesty in her voice cut deeper than false hope ever could have.
"I've thought about it every single day since it started.” She swallowed hard, then steadied herself.
"My dad's stubborn enough to survive just about anything.
And my mom..." A small chuckle escaped her.
"She keeps enough canned food to outlast three apocalypses. "
Seth actually smiled at that. "Sounds like she'd get along with Sawyer."
"Sawyer?"
"He's the one who stockpiled emergency food back when everyone thought he'd lost his mind for it."
She laughed—a genuine laugh this time, bright enough that Layla glanced up from her notebook. "I like him already."
“He’s an interesting character.”
The silence that followed felt different. He noticed she wasn't pressed against her door anymore, the rigid line of her shoulder now softened.
After another mile, Seth spoke again. "Think you could help us while we're out here?"
She looked over, curious. "How?"
His mind drifted to Addy—pregnant, waiting, counting the days—and to Sawyer, stretching every can of food another week, and to Jay, quietly shouldering everyone's burdens without complaint.
"We need this run to count." His grip tightened on the steering wheel.
"Medicine, food, hardware, farm supplies.
Anywhere people wouldn't think to hit first."
Josie nodded almost immediately, leaning forward as her mind started working. "I can do that. Most people head straight for grocery stores, pharmacies, the big box retailers—"
"They already have."
"Exactly." She tapped a finger against her knee, her thoughts spilling into words.
"But there are veterinary clinics with antibiotics nobody considers.
Medical supply distributors that hospitals buy from—not the hospitals themselves.
Agricultural feed stores, restaurant suppliers, industrial warehouses.
Places that don't look like survival on the outside. "
Seth glanced at her, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. "You've thought about this."
"I've been thinking about it since the day I left for Denver." She looked out the windshield toward the road stretching endlessly ahead. "I just never thought I'd have enough people to actually pull it off."
"You do now."
She held his gaze a beat longer than she needed to, then looked away first—but slowly, without the usual urge to put distance between herself and a stranger.
Then the radio crackled, and Jay's voice broke through the static.
"Snow's starting. We keep moving, but stay close."
Seth reached for the microphone. "Copy."
He set it down and glanced at Josie once more. "Looks like Denver just got a little more interesting."
She managed a small smile.