Silent Nights

“That doesn’t look good.”

It’s the first any of them have spoken for the better part of an hour. I look over the top of my maps to see what Drew’s talking about. “Not good” was a bit of an understatement. About a mile out is a mass of cars and at least one semi that I can see. Drew slowly eases off the gas and we slow down as we approach.

“Can we get around it?” Anna asks. I drop my feet from the dash- since we’re going a non-lethal speed now- and sit up to get a better look. We all scan the mess before us. The woods here come right up to the guardrails on the sides of the raised road, and that semi is angled across the median. The entire rest of the road that I can see is blocked with bumper-to-bumper vehicles.

“I can’t tell if there’s traffic backed up behind it,” Drew sighs. I glance down at the map and try to figure out our approximate position.

“We’re not close to any big cities,” I observe. It’s strange to find this kind of pileup here. I knew we’d have to get around the traffic near cities. The nearest big one is still another hour out, and I had intended to steer us clear of it anyway. The cities were supposed “safe zones” in the early days of chaos, so thousands of people flocked in looking for help, shelter, answers. Those same thousands of people probably died there, too, so it's best to stay far away.

Drew finally hits the brakes, hard, and puts the truck in park a good dozen yards away from the mess. He cuts the engine, leaving the keys halfway in the ignition. I wait until Drew gets out and moves to the front of the truck before grabbing the keys. I tuck them into my pocket, and then take a six-inch hunting knife from my bag.

I slide out the driver’s side and shut the door as quietly as possible. Working quickly, I unfasten my belt to work the sheath of the knife onto it. I’m just re-buckling it as I move up beside the other three. Anna leans against the front bumper with the shotgun and nods to Matt and Drew. The two boys head toward the wreck, guns at the ready.

I step closer to Anna and haul myself onto the bumper instead of following them. Careful not to dent the hood too badly, I crawl on top of the cab to get a better look at the road ahead. Scanning from left to right, I realize this might not be as bad as it looks. It’s only a cluster of cars about five deep, not a full-on traffic jam. Besides, there’s a gap on the farthest right shoulder of the road that we can probably use to get around this mess. There’s one car in the way, but it looks like there’s a perfect amount of room among the other cars to push it out of the way.

The boys are at the big eighteen-wheeler. Matt stands by the open door while Drew climbs into the cab. He pulls down the visor and searches the floorboard, probably looking for the keys. I sit on the top of the truck to slide down the windshield and tell them about the gap to their right when something occurs to me. If that semi crashed there- as its jack-knifed position suggests- wouldn’t the keys be in the ignition still?

I look at the road in front of the truck, the same road the semi would have been on. There are no skid marks. I stand back up and look more closely at all the other vehicles. They all look to be in perfect condition. If this was a pileup, there should be signs of it. At least a few of them would be smashed into each other, there would be pieces of glass and plastic all over the road, and there would definitely be skid marks somewhere. And where are the bodies?

A chill runs up my spine. There’s something wrong with this scene, and I don’t care to stay long enough to find out what it is. I step off the cab, leaving a big dent on the hood, to scramble off the truck. Anna startles and asks what’s wrong. I toss her the keys and tell her to get the truck started.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, girly.” Definitely not good.