The Highway

By J. Rudolph

Survivors of a zombie apocalypse flee their homes, but their journey to safety is riddled with terror in this chilling sequel to The Complex.

The Complex is in ruins. The zombies are everywhere.

Cali Anglin and the other survivors have one slim hope: sanctuary in Idaho, thousands of miles away. They must take to the Highway—Interstate 15, the only path to safety. Their trek across a devastated America is one horror stacked on another, constantly pursued by the hungry dead.

They must ask themselves: How much would you pay to begin again?

Praise for The Complex

“I really enjoyed The Complex. . . . It brings a new and missing dynamic to the genre. . . . Ms. Rudolph tells a good story that left me wanting more.” —David Forsyth, author of the Sovereign Spirit Saga

“This is a fantastic read that I could not recommend more!” —Tony Baker, author of Survivors of the Dead

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781618687586

Book preview

Contents

Hitting The Road

Truck Stop

Making Camp, Making Out

Barstow

Scout

Moving Out

Stateline

Entering And Leaving Las Vegas

One Of Us

Utah

Scipio

The Barn

Storms Settling In

Scipio’s Scouts

Can’t Stay Forever

Mercedes

Goodbyes

Traversing Utah

On The Road Again

Groceries And Strangers

Zombies In The Night

Mourning

Move It Out

Welcome To Heartsvale

Brother Michael

Adjustments

Spring Forward

Motions

A Plan Takes Root

The Fight

Gem Road

Acknowledgments

About The Author

Other Books You’ll Love From

Hitting The Road

It felt like the end of the world all over again to lose our home. We thought we were going to be okay after the zombies hit. We had set up our perimeter, had drawn our lines in the sand with a backhoe and started to rebuild.

Now it was over. Now we were bouncing down Interstate 15 in a semi-truck on our way to Idaho. It was the only course of action we could come up with. I felt exhausted. I felt like my soul had been ground into a fine powder. I found myself grateful for the total darkness; if there had been any streetlights at that point, my head would have melted from over-stimulation.

The only sound that accompanied my thoughts was that of the engine rumbling along. There were no longer any radio stations to tune into. If the silence had bothered anyone we would have turned on an iPod or something, but I think I wasn’t the only one relieved by the silence. Trent’s jaw was just now losing those hard lines that were formed by clenching his teeth, revealing just how stressed he had been. My head buzzed and ears still rang echoes from the noise of the nightmare we just escaped from.

When the marauders came and we were fighting for our lives I didn’t exactly have time to process everything that had happened. I acknowledged each death but I kept my emotional walls up to shield myself. I filtered everything through the protection of the nurse hat I was so fond of wearing. Now, sitting in the silence of the night, everything was sinking in. Every lost person was a hard hit.

It all started off so easily. I was Cali Anglin, mom to Drew, wife to Trent, and a nurse who loved her job. I went to work one night and before I was done with that shift the world had decided to come to an abrupt end. That was the day that Shelton’s virus had hit threshold, the day that a virus was born from a rat exposed to too much radiation. The disease mutated from a slow killer with reanimation to a much faster killer with reanimation. The CDC didn’t know what to do; a virus that was turning its victims into cannibalistic killers was so beyond the scope of anything they believed possible. They had spent so long denying that zombies could exist that when they were suddenly confronted with them, they were lost. It was surreal, something right out of a Hollywood screenplay. It felt like the old world existed several lifetimes ago and yet was just yesterday all at once.

People panicked. Most everyone evacuated to a different place, holding to the belief that anywhere else was better than where they were. My family decided that there was no place better to go, so we stayed in the apartment complex we lived in. Seven other units stayed occupied as well. Together we worked to secure the complex and create a safe zone for us to thrive, and we did. We were doing so well. We fortified the grounds of the complex to make zombie access a no passing zone. We raided grocery stores, found an excellent source of water … we even acquired a solar array set up to keep the lights on so we could feel like we were maintaining a normal life for ourselves.

This isn’t to say that we were without our losses early on. Eric died while trying to secure food for the people that stayed. Steven died trying to protect the gardens that we hoped would sustain us. We tried to honor their memory by being a beacon of hope to those that were still out there. Anna found us with her two children and we offered her safety. Daniel’s ex-girlfriend, Alexus, came to reunite with her family. We took her in. We believed in what we were doing, that we could rebuild.

But others came too. They came to take what we worked hard to make. They came to steal from us. At first we tried to hold to the idea that there had been enough destruction, enough death, and we were not going to be party to making it worse. We held them off, turned them away. They left. That’s when we were betrayed.

Alexus had been secretly working with the thieves. By the time we finally figured out what had been happening it was too late. We had taken her in on good faith, as the mother of two of the children in the complex. She turned around and fed all of our security secrets to the marauders. We kicked her out of the complex where she rejoined her group. At first, after we threw her out, we were on high alert. The marauders had promised us that there would be retaliation and we stayed ready for them to attack us. We set up enhanced security; we made escape plans. For a while nothing happened. The more time passed, the more our guard slipped back down. That was when it happened.

DaWayne was on watch the night that they attacked. They saw him standing on the roof that night and they shot him. He got lucky; the bullet hit him in the shoulder. I performed a makeshift surgery to remove the slug and sewed him up the best I could.

Many good people died as a result of the attack. Alexus came with the marauders. She shot Daniel down in cold blood in full view of everyone. Joey took her out. Martha was killed trying to defend our home. The marauders sought to destroy everything we had. They knew what units held supplies and ransacked and destroyed them. When Martha was killed, she knocked over an oil lamp and the unit—her home—turned into a raging inferno. With so many people lost, supplies destroyed, and a raging fire we had no way of managing, we decided to evacuate. There was nothing left to defend. We conceded the fight to them. We got to where the kids were hiding out and moved everyone to the truck, which we had modified to be our escape vehicle. When the guys had first acquired the Spring Forth water truck, I never imagined that it would be our bug-out plan, but it was perfect for moving so many people all at once. Joey had helped everyone into the truck’s trailer, including his wife, who was now in labor, doing everything that he could to make sure everyone was safe. That was who Joey was, the kind of person that would protect everyone else until his last breath. As he went for the handle of the roll up door to close us in, one of the marauders shot him. I was with him when he exhaled his last breath and died. Joey was my friend. He taught me how to use a gun, he taught me how to think along different lines in order to survive, and he taught me to still keep faith, even when all hope was seemingly lost. My friend was dead, our complex wrecked, and we still weren’t in the clear.

Our exit had a drawbridge. We had assigned Anna the task of lowering the bridge for us at the final moment of bug out so at least there would be that one last defense against people and things that were there to harm us. She was supposed to jump into the truck right after she lowered it. When the bridge came down and the zombies started to come in, she saw her husband in the crowd of undead. The hoard had swarmed on us from all around the area, driven by the noise and attention-catching activities of fighting off the marauders. She let the bridge drop and ran to him, not understanding that he was a zombie. Her own husband devoured her as her terrified children listened from the trailer.

We drove over the zombies and out the gate, and kept going. Jody delivered her baby in the trailer as we drove out of the chaos, bouncing down the abandoned freeway. The only hope we had left was in getting to Idaho. We hoped to meet up with Trent’s sister Kristen, her husband Mike, their son, Nathan, and Trent’s parents, Louise and Derek. I didn’t want to think of what could happen if we failed. Failure was not an option here; we had nowhere left to go.

It’s so hard to believe that fight was less than twenty-four hours ago. Everything changes so quickly.

After about thirty minutes of driving, we were in a fairly quiet area, open spaces all around. There aren’t very many spaces in Southern California that are wide open and flat, but there are a few. It was a perk to living in the desert. Under the light of the moon we saw that we were alone in a zombie-free paradise. We decided it was time to pull over for a minute and check on everyone.

We rolled open the trailer door to let everyone out for a bit. The kids were the first to bounce out, having felt confined for too long. The youngest kids, Annali, Dalynn, and Tomisha giggled as they ran in a circle at the opening of the trailer. It seemed that the changes hadn’t effected them at all. Drew, Liam, Kyle, and Abigail were not as animated as the littlest ones. They walked around in a group, kicking at dirt clods, tossing occasional rocks, but didn’t build up the full head of steam that they had once been able to. They were old enough to understand that the world had changed in front of them for the second time, but this time it was more traumatic; they all lost the familiarity and relative security they had by at least being at home. Kyle was the most closed off of the four. He and his sister were orphans now and had no one. I watched them poke around for a bit before I climbed into the trailer to check on Jody.

Jody’s world had been rocked heavily. She held JJ in her arms trying to get him to nurse as tears fell silently down her cheeks. When he finally latched on she looked up at me. Her bright red hair was a mess and her green eyes seemed to stand out even brighter with the red contrast from all the tears. I didn’t think it possible for her to look more pale, but in the aftermath of delivering her son and losing her husband, she was. This was not how having the baby was supposed to go.

He looks like his dad. She dropped her head back down to stare at her son’s face after she whispered her observation. The tears fell faster. I didn’t say anything in response. All I could do was sit next to her. We sat quietly for the next couple of minutes looking at this tiny peanut of a baby.

How is the bleeding? I asked, breaking the silence. Jody shrugged her shoulders. I asked if I could check, and she nodded her head. I couldn’t imagine how she was feeling, not only was she mourning the loss of her husband, she was going through a major hormonal shift and the event that was supposed to be among the happiest in her life, the birth of her son, was marred by all the loss. I pulled out a pair of bright blue disposable gloves from the box I had placed nearby when the delivery was imminent and lifted up the blanket that was covering her legs. The bleeding wasn’t very heavy, and that looked pretty good to me. I pulled off the gloves and covered her back up. I asked if I could push on her stomach a bit to make sure was still contracting well. She nodded again. She said nothing as I palpated her lower abdomen. Physically she was checking out just fine, but I was more than a little worried about her emotional state. She was withdrawn and in pain and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Are you doing the abdominal rubs that I showed you? I asked. She nodded.

I’ve done this before. Jody said with a heavy tone. I nodded.

Yeah. I replied quietly. JJ was her fourth kid; she probably knew more about all the post-delivery stuff than I did.

I’ve done this before. Mommy, widow. Hell, might as well as well do both at the same time. Saves time, right? She roughly wiped at a tear that had started to trickle down her nose, tickling at her right nostril. I leaned in to hug her. She let her face fall on my shoulder and sobbed.

After a moment, Jody lifted her face up and sat back on the pillows. She sighed heavily, looked at her son who had fallen asleep after he was full, and decided that she, too, needed a nap.

When she was as comfortable as I could make her, I went over to Tanya who was sitting on the floor next to the bunk bed where she watched over DaWayne as he slept. How is he doing? I whispered.

He’s doing okay I think, she said softly. I put a hand to his forehead to make sure he hadn’t developed a fever. Infection was the first thing on my mind, having been the one to do his surgery only hours before. DaWayne, a big football playing tough-guy, was lying there in a fitful sleep. I had to wake him up to make sure he was okay, which I wished I didn’t have to do. His mom started to gently wake him.

Pookie? Ms. Cali is here to check on you. Wake up, baby, Tanya whispered into her son’s ear. I smiled a bit at the pet name of Pookie being assigned to this kid, though kid might not be the most apt description. DaWayne was pushing nineteen years old. He was a man by societal standards, but when it comes to your own kid, I suppose they are never a full grown being. DaWayne began to open his eyes groggily. Poor guy, sleep was at least a break from what had to hurt like hell.

How you feeling, hon? I asked softly.

Hurts like a mother fu—Hey, Mom. Didn’t see you sitting there. He smiled a little. Good to see him have some humor. Definitely a good sign. He still didn’t have a shirt on; I cut off the last one, so it was easy to lift a corner of the gauze I had taped down. Swelling had set in from the trauma, but it didn’t look seem excessive. I gave him a warning that I needed to start an IV to get some antibiotics running through him. He groaned.

Aww, man! I hate needles. Really hate needles. Can’t you just shoot me if it gets infected? I rolled my eyes at him.

I’ll be right back. I need to get the stuff. I patted him on his good shoulder.

I riffled through the medical supply section of the bench seat storage and found a powdered vial of Vancomycin and spiked it onto a small IV bag. After the powder mixed with the liquid I connected it to the larger IV bag of saline. I ran the saline through the tubing to get rid of all the air bubbles. Then I gathered the IV start kit and the needle. I got the little tubing set up and went over to look at the veins in his arm. I sat down on the bed, put on the tourniquet, found a good vein, and wiped down the area with rubbing alcohol. He whimpered a bit when I came towards him with the needle. He squeezed his eyes shut. I got the needle in on the first try.

All done, I said when the last tube was connected.

Huh? DaWayne asked, confused. He was so busy being worried that he didn’t even realize I was done. I laughed at him. It occurred to me that I didn’t have anything to hang the bag of fluids up on. It was an easy solution, for once. I put a couple of nails into the bunk above DaWayne’s and bent the heads up to make little hooks. The saline was started first, and before I started the flow of antibiotics I pushed a dose of morphine in the line. He looked like he was in less pain immediately. The antibiotics were started as DaWayne went to sleep. Tanya looked at me and smiled.

You’re a good kid, Cali. Thank you for taking care of my son. I’ll never be able to repay you for patching him up. I smiled and said that I’d check on him in a little bit.

I stepped outside the trailer and stretched my arms above my head. It was definitely going to be a cold night. Trisha was talking with her dad as she watched Daniel’s girls play. I walked over to them to see how they were doing. She was talking about how they were going to need someone to take care of them now.

Dad, she began, I want to adopt them. Tyreese rolled his eyes.

Baby girl, these are kids, not stray puppies. You’re too young to adopt them.

Dad, I’m almost eighteen. Besides, before all this stuff happened, I knew a few girls my age with kids. Tomisha is the same age as Sasha’s son. I could totally take care of them. And next month is Tomisha’s birthday; she should have a family before then. She could tell her dad was not yet swayed. Dad, she continued, it’s not really like it makes any difference who adopts them here anyway. We’re all in this together. I just want them to know I love them and want to be a real momma to them. They never had a momma that loved them. Alexus was just a bitch that used them like a pawn in a game. I want them to know that momma’s aren’t all like that. Momma’s are supposed to love them.

Tanya came out now that DaWayne was resting comfortably. She had heard the last bit of Trisha’s argument. She agreed.

You know hon, she has a point, Tanya said to her husband. It doesn’t really matter who it is that takes them on as their own because we all need each other. We’ll obviously be right here to help her out when she has questions. I’m fine with it if she wants to be their mom. It’s not like social services is there to take them or even to decide what makes a parent anymore. She smiled at Trisha.

Tyreese sighed with a dramatic flourish, knowing he had lost the argument. You got your mom on board. Alright. You have my blessing. Take them on.

Mercedes had been sitting on the trailer edge and had overheard all this. She had been rocking Annali who had been glued to her side ever since her mom died. She had become seriously attached to Mercedes. Annali had been on the edge of sleep when she shook herself awake.

Ms. Mercedes, if Tomisha and Dalynn can get a new mommy then I want one too. Will you be my new mommy? Even if it’s make-believe? My heart broke to hear her ask this.

Mercedes continued to rock Annali and said Sure, baby. If that’s what you want, I’ll be your mommy. Kyle was standing near enough to hear all of this talk about parents. Kyle, if you want I’ll take care of you too.

Kyle weighed what was being presented to him. Yeah, I guess that would be all right. You aren’t my mom though. My mom died, but she’s still my mom. I don’t know what to call you.

You can call me whatever you want, Mercedes said.

Auntie Mercedes? Maybe just auntie? Kyle asked.

Okay by me, she responded, her voice held a tone of comfort that made Kyle’s defensive walls melt away. He looked like he was relieved to know that no one was going to force him to forget his mom; at the same time he needed to know someone was going to take care of him and care about what he needed. He didn’t want his mom to be replaced; Mercedes understood that. He climbed up next to her on the trailer and rested his head on her shoulder.

Thanks auntie, he said.

Everyone in the group seemed to be glad that there was someone for all the kids—that they would all have someone to take care and love them. It was a major lift to our spirits. Everybody needed somebody.

And on that note, we needed to get moving.

Truck Stop

After the break was over and everyone was settled into the trailer, Drew and I joined Trent in the cab. Trent fired up the truck. With a quick check of the gauges, Trent declared that fuel was going to be a priority on somewhat short order. We pulled back onto the silent freeway and started driving. The sun was starting to put out the slightest glimmer of light in the east, at last marking an end to the long night we had. Drew dozed off quickly from his spot on the floor between our seats.

Are we likely to find a station that has diesel fuel? I asked softly, not wanting to wake Drew.

"Hope so ... I’m counting on the fact that the desolation out here has