This Would Be Paradise (Book 3)

Chapter 27

We cautiously got out of the truck. I left my AR15 in the truck, but removed my metal bat. Sheri immediately jumped out and stabbed a roaming infected in the head. John was in the process of unsheathing the hunting knife I had returned to him when the dead infected hit the ground.

"Nice one," Ethan said.

Sheri gave him a grim smile at the compliment. I guess she wouldn't be a wildcard after all. We hesitantly approached the traffic jam. It was about three vehicles deep, but none looked to have crashed into anything other than the back of the vehicle in front of it. The first cars were empty with their doors wide open. The next set of cars were worse for wear. Windshields were shattered and bloodied.

Sheri gasped when we peered into an old Jeep. The driver's head was sticking out of the windshield, glass embedded deep in the skin and completely shredded to the bone around the jaw line. Grime and blood stained the rest of the glass. Then we found the reason for the crash.

The foremost vehicles had crashed straight into a section of the plane wing. The metal wing must have flown off and was currently imbedded in the interstate sticking straight up. As I looked up, I could see that the debris piece was about a foot taller than me.

"It cut the damn car in half!" Rose said, her finger pointing toward the back half of an old Toyota pressed up against the wing-the front half of the car nowhere to be seen.

"How are we going to get past this?" I asked.

The wing had hit the interstate and sliced it all the way to the other side. There was a deep path leading to where the wing had finally stopped. As I tested it with my foot, the cement started to crumble and fall into the void.

Lucas reached into the truck and pulled out the map. Everyone hurried over to take a peek except for me. I continued to test out the broken path. Cement and asphalt chunks crunched under my feet every time I tried to move closer. Something yellow caught my eye and I looked to the left of my foot. It was the cup part of the oxygen mask found in planes. A shiver ran up my spine. I never had a problem with flying before, but now I knew I forever would. Not that planes would be up and running anytime soon-or possibly ever.

The familiar rasping of infected dragged my attention from the cut in the road to looking past it. It didn't sound like just one or two. I went on my tiptoes and tried to look around the wing, but only spotted the tops of abandoned vehicles. A hand was shoved at me, then disappeared as the infected fell through the wide path the plane wing had created. I watched it drop with my mouth open.

There was no way we were getting past something wide enough to swallow a body, not to mention the rasping hadn't stopped. I was willing to bet there were a lot more infected where that one had come from waiting for us on the other side. This was a dead end.

"Bailey, come one," John said.

They were already loaded back in the truck. I ran over and scrambled back into the middle, John following in behind me. He reversed until he could swing the truck around to face the way we had just come from. I looked at him.

"Detour," he said.

We had to backtrack a bit until we came to a turn off that lead us down a non-interstate road. It eventually connected to a highway that Lucas ensured us would lead back to the I10-eventually.

It felt like we had just taken a giant ride around the airport. That stupid blockage had cost us gas and time. Once we got back in the I10 via a major overpass, we were back on the trail again. It was almost immediate, the scene change. No longer were we in the city. Wetlands surrounded us. I could see a huge body of water off to my right reflecting the sunlight back at us. Then there were the swamps.

I crinkled my nose as we passed by. The smell reminded me of a wet dog, damp and stinky. Aside from the smell, it was a cool sight to see. Thick, dense trees that seemed to float on the water. Green sludge drifted along the top of the water with the occasional tree root sticking out. Something moved under the water causing the green muck to shift and sway. I swallowed.

"Lots of wildlife in there," Lucas said, more than likely having seen the same thing I had just witnessed.

"Alligators?" I asked.

Lucas grinned at my hesitant tone. "Could be, or wild hogs. They like to roll around in the muck."

I would be staying clear of swamps. Since we had stuck to mostly the city and the surrounding towns, I hadn't actually seen a genuine Louisiana swamp until now. Even at Ethan's cabin there hadn't been any nearby.

We continued mostly north along the interstate. For a while there was nothing but land, then we could smaller towns clustered off of the road.

"Prairieville should be comin' up soon," Lucas said.

He peered out the passenger's window, his nose practically pressed to the glass.

"There!" Leo said.

He was looking out the same side as Lucas, but spotted the interstate sign first. As we got closer to the exit, the inside of the cab got even more quiet. There was a giant, red hand with an eye in the middle spray-painted over the Prairieville turnoff sign. They should have just used a hand giving us the middle finger-it would've had the same effect.

John brought the truck down the turnoff onto another road. We didn't immediately arrive in the town, we had to keep driving to get to it. We came to another non-interstate highway before we saw the 'Welcome to Prairieville' sign, also graffitied with the ominous symbol. A warning.

"Okay, now which way do I go?" John asked Lucas.

"Keep goin' straight," Lucas answered.

We could have started to play I-Spy with all the symbols plastered around town. It felt like a dog marking their territory.

"I don't see any scouts or anythin'," John said.

"They don't waste manpower on that. They think the markin's are good enough to keep people away," Lucas said. "But just in case, take a left here."

John obligated and we turned off of the main road we were on to a one-way street. Lucas led us down some more reclusive streets. The further we went, the more residential everything became.

"You telling us their hideout is in the 'burbs?" I asked incredulously.

Lucas nodded. "In the newer area, to boot."

There seemed to be an over-kill of schools. I had noticed them when we first entered the town limits. Surely they didn't used to have a population that big that they could support that many schools, could they? Maybe this town took education very seriously, which wasn't a bad thing; it just seemed unnecessary. In the town I grew up in, there were only three elementary schools to choose from-the third one having been built longer after my K-9 days.

We passed by older, but well-maintained houses. The sparse vehicles parked outside weren't old beaters, but they weren't expensive either. This seemed to be a middle-class neighborhood. My Dad always said you couldn't judge a person by their car because for all you knew, that person driving around in a fancy BMW could be taking fifteen years to pay it off while flipping burgers at a fast-food restaurant. I think he just said that to make himself feel better about driving a Subaru. For all I knew, this was the rich part of town.

That thought was turned on its head when Lucas directed us down another road. Instantly the word estates popped into my head. Like most towns in North America, there was clearly a line divide of wealth. Okay, this was the rich part of town. The houses were huge. Most were sporting three car garages, white columns, and immaculate stone fronts with castle-like peaks. They really liked the bricked-front look here.

"Stop here," Lucas instructed. "The house they use is just around the next block. We don't want 'em to know we're here."

John slowed and parked the truck off to the side of the road. We got out of the vehicle quietly. I shouldered my AR15 and gripped the handle of my bat tight as it fell to my side. Everyone else was saddling up as well. It looked like we were preparing to go to war, which in a way, we were. They destroyed Hargrove, killed innocents and took one-possibly more-of us prisoner. In my books, they had declared war and if it's a war they wanted, then a war they would get.