Chapter Twenty-Two
“I’m going to take the back route,” Michael said to Jacob. “There have been some problems going straight through on Highway 75, so we’ll cut across some rural roads to Highway 59. It’ll only add about twenty minutes to the whole trip.”
“What kind of problems on Highway 75?” asked Jacob.
“Well, last month our people were stopped three times by the border police,” Michael said. “I think the U.S. authorities sent them. Highway 59 is through the country, and it’s less well traveled. There is still the chance for trouble, but less of it.”
As we drove down the freeway, we all relaxed and kind of dozed a little. This vehicle was very plush, and Michael had a way of putting you at ease. We all were l
ulled into a sense of security
– and that wasn’t easy to do these days.
“This trip is probably about two hours if we do a straight shot through, but I need to stop for petrol soon, probably in
Stuartburn
,” Michael said. “Maybe we can stretch our legs and get a soda.”
“Sounds good,” Jacob said from the seat beside him. I was behind Michael, with Luke beside me, and Risa beside him and behind Jake. In the very back were Caitlyn, DeAndre and Jonathan.
“Mama, I’m sleepy,” Luke said, yawning.
“Go ahead and try to sleep, Sweetheart,” I said.
“Yes, you all just relax and try to sleep,” Michael said. “You’re in good hands.”
I looked in the rearview mirror into Michael’s smiling face. Laying my head back and curling my arm around Luke, I closed my eyes.
We cruised along like that for about an hour, and I definitely was asleep for most of it, with Luke tucked under my arm snoring gently. Jacob looked like he only dozed, but I definitely heard the sounds of slumber coming from behind me. Risa dozed beside Luke, her head against the window.
Michael slowed the vehicle down and pulled into a gas station. Looking out the window, I didn’t see much there.
Huh. Must be a really small town
,
I thought.
“This is the gas station in
Stuartburn
, it’s a small farming community out here,” said Michael. He pointed to a small store in the parking lot. “You can get some sodas there. They have gum, crisps, and water.”
He hopped out and began to pump the gas. We all piled out of the SUV and walked around a bit, stretching out legs before wandering over to the little store. Luke was still groggy, but his eyes opened wide at the small display of candy.
Turning to me, he asked, “Please, Mama?”
“Sure, baby,” I said. “You can pick one candy and a drink. How about a Kool-Aid?” He smiled and went to go select a treat. I reached for a water bottle from the cooler.
“Risa,” I heard Jonathan say as they both came into the store. “What do you feel like?”
“Mmmm, I think I’ll go for a Pepsi,” she said, smiling at Jonathan. He smiled back at her and reached into the cooler, pulling out two Pepsis. I smiled at them both.
“Mama, I want this one,” said Luke, holding up a
Nestlé’s
Crunch candy bar.
“Alright, Sweetie,” I said. We all made our way to the counter and paid. As we left the store, Jacob, DeAndre and Caitlyn were coming in. I unscrewed the water bottle and took a long swig of the cold liquid. It felt like heaven going down my parched throat. As I brought my head back down, I took a deep breath of the cool country air. I could smell the earthy scent of crops.
“Mama?” said Luke.
I opened my eyes again, and I was met with a disturbing sight. It was Michael, pumping gas, but holding his head in his hands.
“Hey, you okay?” I asked, walking up to him.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve just got a splitting headache is all,” he answered.
“I can drive a bit if you’d like,” I said.
“Maybe. I just took a couple of aspirin, I’m hoping it’ll help,” he said, smiling.
I opened the side door, and Luke hopped into the big SUV. I slid in beside him and helped him open his Kool-Aid twist top.
“Now, try not to spill that,” I said as he sipped the brightly colored red liquid. He was careful not to.
A few minutes later, everyone was back in their seats and Michael had finished up and gone to wash his hands.
“I am so excited to be almost to Sanctuary,” said Caitlyn. “I wonder what Winnipeg is like?”
“I think it’s the only really big city in Manitoba,” said DeAndre.
“It will feel great to be somewhere safe,” I said. “It’s getting a bit tiring, always being on our guard.”
“Do you think it will be completely protected, Alyssa?” asked Risa.
“I don’t know what to expect, Honey,” I said.
Michael returned and hopped in the driver’s seat. “Everybody ready? Eh?” He said.
“Ready and excited to be heading to Sanctuary,” Jacob said, smiling.
“Then let’s go,” Michael said, smiling back at him. “We should be there in less than an hour.” He turned out of the parking lot and headed back onto the country road.
“This is Route 59, and it will take us almost all the way there,” Michael said over his shoulder.
We smiled to each other. We couldn’t wait.
“What will we do once we get there,” Jonathan asked.
“Start a new life, I suppose,” said DeAndre.
“Once we’re settled down,” Caitlyn said. “I think I’d like to take up painting once again.
Caitlyn had been painting in oils for over a year now; her paintings were really beautiful. She had even done a really nice small portrait of Luke when he was 3 that I had somewhere.
“Oh, I’d love you to do one of a purple flower,” I said.
“Or how about a big black horse, running,” said Risa, smiling. She was remembering that black horse from the Summers farm. I think if she’d been able to take that horse with us, she would have.
I smiled. “Maybe we can find a place for you to go horseback riding, Risa,” I said. She smiled broadly at me and nodded her head.
“I’d like to go too,” said Jonathan. I’m quite good with horses. I loved riding the fields with my uncle, checking out all the animals.”
“You can go together, then,” said Caitlyn. “Heck, maybe I’ll go. I used to go riding when I was a little …”
She was cut off by the worst sound you could ever hope to hear in a closed vehicle.
“Grrrrrrr…uhnnnnn….”
Oh, dear God. It was a zombie growl that faded into a moan of sorts. It was coming from Michael.
We all froze. Jacob was staring at Michael in horror. My heart fell to my knees as I remembered our weapons were all in the very back, out of reach.
“Ohhhhh……nnnnhnnn….” Groaned Michael. His head was down and the vehicle was starting to drift to the side a little.
We were barreling down the highway at 60 mph with a driver who was turning. Right now.
Jacob unbuckled his seat belt and grabbed the wheel as the heavy SUV veered to the side more sharply. He brought us back onto the highway. Michael’s head was still down and he was breathing heavily.
Suddenly his head snapped up and his eyes went wide. He seemed to grip the steering wheel like a lifeline, and his knuckles went white with the effort.
“Michael!” said Jacob sharply. The man didn’t respond. “MICHAEL!!”
At this second, louder command, he looked over at Jacob. His face showed slight recognition as he said, “Wha…what’s happening to me?” before letting out another long groan, “uhnnnnnn … nnnn!”
“Oh, God,” I said involuntarily.
“MICHAEL, STEP ON THE BRAKE!” Jacob commanded. “STEP. ON. THE. BRAKE. MICHAEL!”
Michael’s head twitched a little, but stayed down and still.
At this point, our speed was going up and, although Jacob had the steering wheel, he was right in the lap of a man turning into a zombie.
Making a decision, I unbuckled my seat beat and reached forward, grabbing Michael by the ears and hair. I just grabbed hold of anything I could. I pulled his head back. My feet dug in and I was pulling so hard my rear came off the seat.
“GET THE BRAKE, JAKE!” I said.
Jacob rose up and, still holding on to the steering wheel, put his foot between Michael’s legs and tried to find the brake.
Michael growled again, “Rrrrrrrrowlllll……..”
Jacob cursed under his breath and leaned further into Michael’s lap. I saw Michael seem to come to a bit and try to grab Jacob with his clawed hands.
Holding tight to Michael’s head, I screamed, “JAKE!”
Suddenly I felt a large weight and looked to see DeAndre come over the seat. Leaning over beside me, he reached and grabbed Michael’s arms at the elbows, and pulled them back so that Jake could work on finding the brake.
Everything seemed to last an eternity, but in reality was just a few moments.
The SUV veered crazily back and forth along the highway as Jacob fought to find the brake.
Suddenly, the SUV had begun to decelerate. Jake’s foot had found the brake. He pushed hard and steered to the side; the tires spun some and the vehicle swerved slightly on the dirt shoulder, and a moment later we were stopped.
“GRRRRRRLLLLLL…..” Michael the zombie was trying to reach Jake, who was less the 6 inches away from its mouth.
“EVERYBODY OUT!” DeAndre yelled as we came to a stop.
Risa and Caitlyn opened the doors, and everyone flooded out onto the asphalt, leaving Jake, DeAndre, me and a freshly turned zombie alone in the enclosed space.
“Jake, I can’t hold this thing much longer,” I said as I felt the thing’s ears and hair slipping from my grasp. I cursed the short haircuts most men favored.
Jake hurriedly put the SUV in park, then scrambled out of the zombie’s lap and out the door.
“On the count of three,” said DeAndre, looking at me. “One, two, …three.” At the same time we both let go and jumped out the SUV doors at the same time.
“Come on,” Jake said, running around back to get his shotgun. Fortunately, the back was unlocked. We all rushed to retrieve our weapons as we heard the zombie growling inside, growing more and more agitated. In an instant, it got the door open beside it and fell out onto the road.
“Oh!” Caitlyn said in surprise, when the thing let out a deafening roar. It was fully turned and getting its nasty on.
“I’ll get it,” I said, as I walked around the side of the SUV, my shotgun at the ready. The thing was nearly upside down, having fallen out of the SUV with its seatbelt still on. It was hanging by its knees. It looked at me and snarled malevolently.
“Well now. Stuck are you?” I said to it.
“GRRRRRARRR!” it roared back. It was stuck fast. I decided to have a bit of a moment with it.
“You know, you might have told us you’d been infected,” I said. “Or did you just have an encounter with a zombie in the past week and forget about it?”
I circled to the front of the driver’s side.
“You almost killed us!”
“RRRRRRrrrrrrr…” It tried to reach me with its clawed hands.
“But, hey,” I said as I walked up to it. “Thanks for the new SUV.” And I put the shotgun an inch from its head and pulled the trigger.
The zombie’s head was now mostly gone. Black goo dripped onto the pavement. Splattered, diseased brains had splashed onto my boots.
“Anybody got a towel?” I asked.
“Here ya go, Alyssa,” Jake said, tossing me a rag. “Remind me never to tick you off.” He smiled at me.
Laughing in relief that we had survived this nearly fatal scenario, I bent and wiped off my boots. DeAndre came from the front passenger side and unbuckled the thing, and it fell to the ground.
Jacob grabbed its foot and dragged it over to the embankment.
I heard Luke with Caitlyn and went to go see.
“Don’t you ever mess with my mama and daddy again!” Luke stomped his feet, his fists curled at his side. “Zombie doodoohead!”
We all laughed, and I picked Luke up and kissed his cheek as he giggled, hugging me back.
We all got back in the SUV, and this time I was driving. It was almost like old times.
“Michael said to follow this highway into the city,” I said. “Let’s do that, and once we’re there we can call Sanctuary and asked for someone to meet us and lead us the rest of the way in. Sound good?”
“Sounds good to me, Babe,” Jake said, buckling himself in beside me.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
It only took us another forty-five minutes to arrive in Winnipeg. It was a pretty big city, bigger than Fresno, the city where we’d all lived when we were in high school. People were everywhere, making it seem safe. We stopped at a gas station, and Jacob called the Sanctuary people again. The sent out yet another contact, this time a woman.
“Hello, family!” A tall woman with the body of a rock climber came walking up to us as we waited in the parking lot of the Petro-Canada station on Saint Anne’s Road. It was late afternoon and, after exchanging silly passwords involving Jake hopping on one leg and reciting the alphabet, we followed her in her car for eight miles, to the northern edge of town. She had said her name was Philippa, and she spoke in a French accent and explained that she was
Québécoise
,
or, from the province of Quebec. She smiled and laughed a lot, but we were travel-worn and world-weary and we just wanted to get there. She must have sensed this, because she smiled, patted my arm and the top of Luke’s head, and said, “Come on, let’s go.”
So we followed her, up this long road, framed on either side by grass and small trees, as it wound up a gentle slope to a big iron gate. She must have called in, because there was no box, but the gate swung open silently only a minute after we pulled up to it. We continued on through the gate, which swung shut behind us, and we continued up the drive another hundred yards, finally pulling up behind Philippa and in front of a huge house.
So this was Sanctuary.
This house was actually the home of one of the Fredericksons, a wealthy family with roots in Manitoba from way back.
That night, we all washed up. Our clothes were taken and
returned to us hours later,
cleaned and boots polished. The Fredericksons
and their household staff had let us keep our weapons with us after we told them everything we’d been through. Knowing our story, they understood why we wanted to keep them handy. Just in case. We all had huge bedrooms, and each of us took several hours to bathe and rest. Later in the evening, delicious dinners were delivered to our rooms.
Grateful that our hosts understood how exhausted we must be, we ate and turned in for the night. I must have slept a good ten hours, completely wiped out from the previous two days. In the morning, I took another hot shower, letting the steam rise around me in the huge gold and ivory colored bathroom, its marble tiles and gold fixtures accenting the porcelain sink and shower. I felt renewed upon emerging, a thick towel around my head and a fluffy white robe wrapped around me. Matching fuzzy white slippers completed the ensemble.
Our hosts finally met us at brunch on the back sunroom.
“Hello, pleased to meet you,” Jacob smiled and shook the man’s hand.
“Hello,” we all murmured, coming into the room behind Jake.
“The pleasure is all mine,” said the man, shaking Jake’s hand and taking mine with a bow and kissing it lightly. I blushed. Can you believe that? I blushed.
The man looked to be in his mid-thirties, with short brownish red hair and brown eyes. He was dressed in what I can only describe as casual billionaire style, complete with loafers and smoking jacket.
“My name is James Howard Frederickson III, and I am very happy to meet you, he said.
Smiling at us and setting us at ease, he continued.
“There are many different choices this morning,” he said, waving his hand to show all the food behind him on the tables. “Help yourselves.”
We all went and sampled the delectable dishes while Jacob retreated to one side of the room to speak with our host.
____
It turned out that the opulent home we ended up staying in for a month was not exactly the real Sanctuary. Jim (he had insisted we call him that) had heard about Sanctuary and had offered his home and his help to the cause.
He had heard of the U.S. government being after Luke, but he hadn’t known we were the ones his operatives had helped across the border. It was only afterward, that day we all had brunch, that he noticed Luke’s coloring and wondered.
We explained about our time in Tennessee – that we’d been warned by Stanley and had fled north at Paddy’s suggestion. Jim appeared pleased that word of Sanctuary had reached that far south.
Jim was so taken with our family that he offered to let us stay on his property, and we took him up on the offer. We made our new home in a second residence on the property that had been designed as a guest house. Jacob and I, DeAndre and Caitlyn, Risa, Luke and Jonathan got settled and, after a month of comfort, approached Jim with a proposal.
“What did you say?” Jim asked, pushing Luke higher and higher on the swing set in our backyard.
“You heard me,” Jacob said, laughing.
“We want to help smuggle other people to Sanctuary, the way Mark and Michael helped us,” I said as I rushed to blow another dandelion. Risa, Jonathan and I were having a contest to see who could pick the most.
“But, do you realize the danger you will be in?” Jim said.
“We know. We want to help,” DeAndre said.
“Of course, Luke will have to stay here while we are out on assignment,” Caitlyn said.
I nodded.
But, I can help, too,” Risa said, standing straight and stretching to make her 5-foot, 7-inch frame look bigger.
Jim laughed. “Now, I don’t know about that, Risa. You’re only 13.”
“Well, we’ll have to think about that one,” I said, looking at Risa. I never thought of her as only 13, she seemed much older than that. I studied her solemn demeanor. She winked at me.
“Hey, I want to help, too,” Jonathan said. “I go where Risa goes.”
“We’ll talk over who is old enough to help and who might be in a few years, guys,” Jacob said in a tone that was a bit deeper than usual. It was a tone he adopted whenever he wanted to assert his authority. Risa and Jonathan both fell silent. I knew they both respected Jake so much, they’d do exactly as he instructed, whatever it might be.
Looking at Jacob, I could almost read his mind. He was remembering the little girl zombie and how Risa had been the one to destroy it. She was so brave, but she had been through so much. We still wanted to protect her. We couldn’t help it.
“We will iron out all the details later,” Jim said. “And this is something your father and I will discuss, with Alyssa, DeAndre and Caitlyn’s input. But it sounds like a very good move, especially for the Sanctuary team.” He shook Jacob’s hand, smiling.
We knew it had been tough. He’d lost both Mark and Michael in bringing us across the border, and although such operations weren’t frequent - occurring maybe once a month or so - it was still an extremely dangerous job. Jim worried constantly about the people who worked for him. It seemed like he lost a Sanctuary soldier with almost every rescue operation.
The zombies, it seemed, were growing bolder. And they were evolving. The
Yersinia Pestis
bacteria that was the cause of the outbreak back in 2012 had been adapting steadily in the face of all attempts to fight it. In the beginning, the infected individuals took between a few hours and a few days to turn. Now it was taking longer – more like a few days to a few weeks. You never knew what would happen. In the trials and experiments they had been conducting since the first days of the epidemic, scientists had made some progress, but they still hadn’t isolated anything like a vaccine. Or a cure.
Jim made some inquiries through his contacts and found that the scientists at the CDC still wanted to get their hands on Luke. They had no real plan; they still wanted to study him and do experiments on his body to find out what might work. His body. His corpse. Jim found out that a few of the scientists wanted to keep him alive and pump him full of experimental drugs. Those were the more ethical ones. The rest – the majority – wanted to kill him and dissect him like some frog in a science classroom. Jim was enraged when he heard this. Enraged for Jim meant agitated pacing back and forth as he spoke, his jaw grinding he was so upset. He had grown quite fond of Luke, as most people did upon getting to know our little boy.
“Absolutely not. I know I have no real say in what happens in Luke’s life,” Jim said, “but as his Uncle Jim, I simply won’t allow it. They will not hurt one little hair on his head.” He rested his hand on Luke’s head as he said this. They had been playing checkers. Luke was winning.
“I think Luke is safe here, Jim,” Jake said. “Nothing is going to happen to him. We’ve been protecting him for nearly six years
now;
no one’s going to hurt him. None of us will allow it.”
DeAndre, who was standing nearby, nodded.
“Anybody who tries to hurt Lukey will have to go through me,” Risa said, her hands on her hips. She was channeling Wonder Woman. Or Xena. I could almost see the cape flying out behind her.
Jonathan smiled at her. Those two were in the throes of puppy love. They had spent so much time together walking in Jim’s backyard gardens, and sipping root beer floats while gazing into each other’s eyes. Jonathan was still very shy, but he was on his way to becoming the kind of man I knew I’d be proud of if I were his mother.
Jim and Jacob talked things over deep into the evening, and the next day we all agreed: we would join the Sanctuary team.
___