Manny clenched his eyes shut for a moment before opening them again and speaking. “We were too late.”
I pursed my lips before I finally spoke. “Some had to make it out. If they made it to cars and stayed ahead of the herds, they could’ve made it.” I wasn’t lying; I believed my words. After all, someone had to have locked the infected in the theater from the outside. Whether they got away in time…chances were no one would ever know.
“I thought they’d be safe,” one of the newcomers muttered without any inflection. “I thought the herds were following us.”
“God,” someone else said. “So many kids…lost.”
“We should’ve gone back for them.”
“My Ginny,” a man said, pulling at his hair.
“Maybe they got out in time.”
“We have to try to find any survivors,” the woman who’d first showed me a picture said, though the picture was now crumpled in her grip. “Manny, we need to go back.”
“We have to go back and find anyone we can.”
The man who’d been pulling at his hair screamed, “Stop it! Stop it! You all know they didn’t get out. They’re dead! We left them there to die! They’re all dead or they’re zeds!”
Manny held up his hands. “Whoa. Enough. We don’t know that for sure. Some might have gotten out. Even if they did, there are all the herds between us and them. We can’t search for them if we’re dead. We have to look out for ourselves first. Once the herds pass through, then we can go back.”
“How will we survive the herds? If Marshall couldn’t survive, we have no chance here!” a woman cried out.
Tyler stood up. “I have an idea, but it’s a long shot.”
Chapter VI
The following morning’s flight was a bumpy one, and I had to keep both hands on the yoke. The weather was unseasonably warm, and the heat caused thermals to pop up in the air. Tyler was strapped in next to me in the Cessna 172. Sitting behind us, Jase scanned the countryside for anything useful while Griz slept soundly, his snores coming over the intercom every once in a while.
Clutch, as Tyler’s second-in-command, was in charge of the park whenever Tyler was offsite for longer than a few hours. When Camp Fox had relocated to the park, the pair had reached an agreement to never ride in the same vehicle because the park couldn’t risk losing both of our seasoned military officers. Even though their knowledge and leadership had saved our collective ass many times over, I suspected the other reason they didn’t ride together was because they pissed each other off as much as they needed each other.
Clutch couldn’t come along today for three reasons. First, the air was too turbulent for his back. Second, Tyler was the only person who’d spoken with the guy we were meeting today. Third and most important, Clutch was shit as a diplomat. He was great at getting people in line—and was likely running all the residents through the training wringer right now—but when it came to begging for help, Tyler’s smooth personality was needed.
Tyler currently had his head propped against the glass, looking outside, his hand tapping to the beat of the music piping through our headsets. He had his iPhone plugged into the plane’s audio system, and the connector charged the device while it played. Right now, music from the Nadas filled my headset.
“The zeds around here aren’t showing any signs of migrating yet. I wonder if they do leave, how far south they’ll go,” he said without looking up, the music volume auto-muting while he spoke.
“Who cares as long as it’s a long ways from us,” Jase replied from the backseat.