We were turned away from one of the evac trucks to the Protection Camps because they wouldn’t take my mum’s service dog. The kid with the SMG just kept tapping the No Pets sign, no matter how much we explained that Mitzi is a seizure alert dog and Mum might die without him, especially since the meds were running short.
She tried to make us leave her. We wouldn’t.
Mitzi has saved our lives about seven times on the road. He’s not a big dog, but he can smell the Dead from a long way away. He never barks now. He’s got a different alert from his seizure alerts when he smells them; a sort of low whine and pointing in the direction they’re coming from with his nose. Then he crawls into Mum’s lap and starts shivering.
We stay away from the motorways, especially the big open raised flyovers. If we ever have to follow a road, we pick one with verges and good cover. Bridges are the worst. We’ve ended up cutting away to cross a river on stepping stones and swimming the deepest bit just to avoid getting caught on them.
The best you can say about the Dead is that they’re not really ambush predators. The worst is that, though they’re not fast, once they’re on you, they’re hard to shake unless something else distracts them. And that’s usually someone else.
Do you know what that’s like, being tracked by one of the Dead for days, til you don’t think you can move your foot to take another step and your mind is just this endless screaming prayer of “Please God please please save us,” and then they hear a noise, a shout, a scream, an engine, and suddenly they’re off, shambling after it? And you know, you know, that you’re safe now because another person has just been catapulted into that hell you’ve escaped?
Better to hide and stay silent. For days if you have to. Better to never let them get on your trail.
We’ve got smarter now though. I’ve got an old rape alarm I found in a house we went into to scavenge for food. I charge it on our solar charger. I’ve been able to stash it in a tree twice and leave the Dead pawing at the trunk while we escaped. It’s been worth doing a big circle to come back for those times, though I know a time will come when it won’t be.
I’m scared of winter coming, when it’s going to be colder and harder to hide, harder to stay still in the open for long periods without risking hypothermia and harder to charge the solar batteries. We might need to find a place to settle before then, somewhere we can fix up, with good hiding places.
We’re heading north. There were too many people here in the Before Times. There’s too many Dead now.
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