the manifest. All you have to do is make it to the airport.” Steve’s voice sounded hopeful. Cautious, but hopeful that she would say yes.
“I have to think about it,” Katie finally said, knowing her answer would be no.
“OK, but don’t think too long. This will only work as long as there’s a pilot available.” For the first time since Katie had called him, Steve sounded upbeat.
“I’ll think about it,” Katie said again. “I’ll call you back in a couple of hours to check on the fighting in the area.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Steve said, keeping the connection open until Katie finally pressed the END button.
6
Katie talked to Steve several times over the next few days. Her concern grew as he described what he was seeing on the satellite. What had been small groups at first were now forming into larger crowds. Each one had successfully taken one of the grocery stores, and for the moment things had reached a degree of equilibrium.
More plumes of smoke were visible all around her home, and the sporadic gunfire she heard was coming closer each day. Then, just after noon on the sixth day the power went out. Katie had been expecting it and was more than a little surprised that it had stayed on as long as it had without anyone from the utility maintaining the grid.
Within an hour the temperature inside the house climbed from a comfortable 75 degrees to a stuffy 85. She knew it would only keep climbing as it was well over 110 outside with another eight hours before sunset. She dumped all of the ice from the freezer into a cooler before it could start melting, but there wasn’t much else she could do.
Going outside with one of the last bottles of cold water, Katie sat down and lit another of John’s stash of cigarettes. Six days since the attacks. She had no idea where John was, or if he was even still alive. Steve had described to her the massive herds of infected moving around in the southeastern part of the country. Had John gotten out ahead of them?
Katie knew that if he’d had the chance to get out, he’d have been able to fight his way clear of about anything. But had he had a chance? He could have fallen victim to the dispersal of the nerve gas. He could have become trapped by one of the massive herds Steve talked about. Any number of things could have happened to him. She was finally ready to acknowledge that it was time for her to do something other than wait for him to show up.
But what? Flee to Australia as Steve wanted her to do? Then what? If she made it was she ready to live her life out without ever knowing what happened to her husband? Maybe she should head to the mountains. The temperatures wouldn’t be dangerously hot and she could leave John a note letting him know where she was.
Deciding that was the best course of action, Katie stubbed the cigarette out and stepped into the sun to call Steve. He answered on the first ring, sounding happy to hear from her then disappointed when he learned her final decision was that she wasn’t coming to Australia.
“Whatever you do, you need to do it soon.” He said in a subdued voice. “There’s a large group formed up just to the west of you and they’re starting to move into the residential neighborhoods to loot the houses. You don’t want to be home when they show up.”
“How bad is it?” Katie asked.
“Bad. They’re doing things… well, you’ve seen this happen before. I don’t need to tell you what they’re doing, especially to people that try to fight back.”
“No, I don’t want to know.” She said. “How does the highway northeast of me going into the mountains look?” Katie wanted to rush inside and make her final preparations to depart, but she couldn’t move under cover until she was through speaking with Steve.
“Hold on,” he said. Katie could hear him breathing into the phone as he typed for a few moments. Then, “It’s wide open at the moment. A few abandoned vehicles along the way, but they’re to the side and not blocking the road. There’s some traffic moving, but you’re far enough out of the city that it seems to have been overlooked.”
“Thank you, Steve. I have to start moving now. I’ll call you once I’m on the road.”