The landscape around them was featureless grasslands only beginning to green. The sky continued to descend, the clouds churning above the treetops. In the distance, the land humped into a broad hill, and dots of abandoned vehicles began to appear. They weaved in and around them, doors yawning open, windows broken, a sprawled and bloated body on a tailgate.
“What’s that smell?” Ty asked, covering his nose.
The air thickened with each mile they drove, the stench of the plague’s rapid decomposition like a clinging curtain hovering above the land. Ahead, the line of vehicles became a mass that choked the road as well as the dirt track snaking around the base of the broad hill. A business sign had been knocked down and a torn banner waved in its place, only a handful of words discernable on its flaccid surface.
United States Ar
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Only nec belongin
Milit guiden
Stay inside your ve
Alice pulled to the side of the road, and they stared at the lane strangled with hundreds of cars and trucks all parked at different angles like a portion of rush hour traffic had detoured here and then fallen still indefinitely.
“Holy shit,” Alice said. She sighed and let her face drop into one hand before rubbing her temple. “If they’re—”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Quinn said. “We need to check out the compound before we make any decisions.”
“You ever see that movie where the family drives all the way across the country to go to an amusement park but when they get there, it’s closed?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not like this at all,” Alice said, climbing out.
They armed themselves, and Quinn strapped Roman’s pack on. They left the rest of the supplies with the car, locking it before moving along the ditch lining the dirt drive. They walked past car after car. Many were intact, their windows rolled tight as if the occupants had merely paused here to get out and sightsee. There were no bodies visible, inside or out, along the road. Only the chirp of insects and the sounds of their passage accompanied them. The stagnant line of vehicles curved, and they followed their arc, stopping as one as the scene opened before them.
“What is it?” Ty asked, gripping Denver’s collar.
It was a warzone.
The vehicles past the point where they stood were torn masses of steel and shattered glass. The road became a battered field, studded with debris and cratered to a lunar quality. A chain link fence had been erected beyond the devastation, topped with spools of razor wire, but it too lay mashed to the ground in countless places, support posts leaning like weary soldiers. Past the fence was a five-foot concrete barricade made of interconnected pieces like those separating the center of a four-lane highway. It’s top was painted a bronze that shone in the cool light of the day. Many of the sections were tipped over or crumbling, cracks spanning from bullet holes like eggs ready to break. Beyond the first ring of concrete, a second much higher barrier stood, interspersed by vacant, steel guard towers and scaffolding.
Everything was silent and still. Unmoving.
“Damnit,” Alice swore, sweeping the entire area with her rifle. Quinn took several steps forward and cupped a hand to his mouth.
“Hello!”
His call echoed across the grassland and returned to them. A crow called from a solitary tree at the base of the hill, its voice mocking.
They waited and then picked their way forward through the divots and piles of blasted steel that they realized had been cars and pickups. Strands of clothing were buried beneath tossed sand, a child’s backpack hung from a twisted fender by one frayed strap. They stopped at the first concrete barrier, and Quinn saw that the top wasn’t painted bronze as he’d first thought.
It was covered in brass shell casings.
They were everywhere. They littered the ground outside the barrier, and inside, they rose like miniature sand dunes. Every ten paces there was a semi-bare spot on the ground, and he realized this was where the shooters had been standing.
“What happened here?” Quinn said, brushing the shells with his palm. They tinkled like steel rain as they dropped to the dirt.
“I don’t want to know,” Alice said, reaching out to grasp Ty’s free hand.