Dead Wrangler by Justin Coke

didn't respond.
     

CHAPTER TEN
    Shotgun Divorce
     
    She woke up. It was night time. The kids were playing a video game. They looked up at her.
    "Macaroni and cheese!" They shouted.
    She groaned and got up. Goddamn, her arm hurt.
    So, she thought. Calvin got ripped off.
    "Hey Gary, did you guys fall asleep too?"
    "Oh no, we had to stay up to make sure nobody else tried to break in."
    She nodded. Sugar pills. Calvin paid God knows what for sugar pills. She had passed out from the adrenaline dump.
    She started to make macaroni and cheese. She dialed Calvin. He picked up after a few rings.
    "You didn't do it?" He sounded sad.
    "I did. Those pills were worthless."
    "David traded them to me for our antique silverware, then took off for the hills. He said his brother was a chemist..."
    Neither one of them seemed to be able to think of anything to say.
    "Does the arm hurt?" He asked.
    "Like a motherfucker," she said.
    "That's a good sign. Your odds of being immune go up twenty percent if the victim retains feeling in the wound."
    She didn't have much to say to that. In fact, she didn't have much to say at all.
    "You still trapped?"
    "Worse than ever. They just keep coming. None of them are getting in, but we just can't get out."
    She didn't have the energy or interest to ask who he was with.
    "Take care," she said.
    "Love you," he said.
    She hung up.
    When she had closed her eyes earlier that day, she thought she was going to die. With that, it seemed like her attachment to her old life had died too. She was born again.
    Till death do us part, she thought. Now her only concern was the children. She had to protect them. After she made the mac and cheese.
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Exodus
     
    Meghan's iPhone burred. The bright red of an Exodus update appeared. She slid the phone off the bed-stand and read it.
    Peoria Update: Classification Now Level 2; use extreme caution. Downtown area esp. dangerous.
    She unlocked the phone. The updates were fast and furious. Red dots appeared all around her; sightings from validated Exodus users. There was a furious red cluster in the neighborhood only a few miles away. She peered out the window. Trevor was still gone. She hadn't heard from him in days. He was supposed to be back two days ago. Worry ate at her. Trevor was her only sibling and about the only family member whose name she could remember. He would have been back by now, or at least called if something were wrong. She had told herself last night that if he wasn't back this morning that she would hook up with a group on Exodus and get out of Peoria. That growing ball of red wasn't growing as fast as it used to, but it wasn't because it wasn't growing anymore. That just meant there was no one around to report it. They were dead or fled. She was going to have to pick one of those groups today, she knew it.
    She was pathetically unprepared. Her survival supplies amounted to ten cans of a variety of Campbell soups, a .38 revolver with twenty rounds, and her running gear. She had a lot of running gear; water bottle belts, breathable shorts and shirts, and some very nice shoes. But running was more of a last ditch thing.
    She put off hitting the "Find an Escape Party" button in the Exodus app and ate some Grape Nuts as slowly as she could.
    Trevor was six years older than her, a decrepit thirty-one. He had been in the army for a while, and now drove trucks. He'd been in Mississippi on a normal run when all this had started. At first he had kept on the road, when it was still possible to think it was some sort of media hysteria or isolated incidents. Then one day he had called.
    "Meghan, you know this shit everyone is talking about?"
    "Yeah, War of the Worlds part two."
    "No, no its not. I saw it today. It's real. Totally real."
"What happened?" she asked.
    "The car in front of me. Just going along, no big deal. All of a sudden this dude jumps up from the back seat and just tears into the woman driving the car. I mean, just biting her neck. She