Within an hour, they were back on the road. There was a wide median and no jersey wall, so the many cars on the highway when their drivers succumbed to the virus veered into the grassy middle dividing the north- and southbound lanes of the interstate, leaving stretches of clear road for the ATVs to traverse. When they had to maneuver around wrecks, there was plenty of room on the shoulders for the bikes. An hour or so into the ride, and Court no longer felt the vibrations in the back of his teeth or the bugs stinging his face and hands. He tried to keep his head down, his cheek pressed to the center of Ronnie’s back between his friend’s shoulder blades, and hung on as tight as he dared.
It still seemed impossible to outrun the memory of what they had found back in the woods.
They’d been
