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In the parking lot John said, "All we got to do is get back to the water tower, take the door, get back to the burrito stand With any luck the Caddie will still be there--"

"We can’t walk We have to, uh, borrow a vehicle Soht the hell across that cornfield"

"Look" He pointed "Left of the Greyhound"

There was a very muddy pickup, on jacked-up suspension In the bed was an equallythat the keys were in the truck They weren’t, and the truck was locked

Looking around nervously, we rolled the bike out of the truck bed I had only driven a motorcycle twice in my life, and hadn’t crashed either tio, but had crashed it twice We didn’t discuss it, I jumped on and John climbed on behindlot, onto the grass, into the stubble andthe ruts and John had his ar bones I told him to loosen up because I couldn’t breathe I aiht at the vertical columns of the tower, brown at the seaether I saw the blue Porta-Potty at the base, as it grew out of a speck in the distance Nove myself do all of it from afar

They couldn’t have Amy They could have me, they could have John, they could have Undisclosed and the Midwest and America I’ll cede all of that to theet Amy She’s off the table

Ao, the same one that took her hand and left her tethered to a bottle of pain pills she could never allow out of her sight She lost her brother, she lost her home The world owed her oing to have to try

The reporter’s face kept flashing through h her eye--

Stop it

--and Amy was closer than that Closer to the infested house than the reporter How in the hell had she gotten so close? Why didn’t they stop her? Maybe the National Guard had gotten her by now, or the CDC Maybe they’d just hold onto her until they got all of this under control

They will never get this under control

I was numb all over, a combination of the cold and the vibration and the panic and exhaustion I couldn’t feel the bike jolting over the ruts in the field, I couldn’t feel John’s arms around me, I couldn’t feel the half-dozen wounds that had been co all over my body

I pulled up to the Porta-Potty, found the kickstand and said, "If it looks like the feds have it under control, we find soe and--"

John was not there

I juure way off in the distance, frantically waving his ar He had fallen off somewhere around the first third of the trip

No time to wait for hie to hiive us thirtyas far away as he could Somebody had to stay on the other side of those barricades I left the e on the screen and laid the phone on the seat of the dirt bike Couldn’t use it in town anyway

I went to the door of the middle Porta-Potty and whispered, "Burrito stand"

To be clear, the doors absolutely did not work that way It was just wishful thinking, or a prayer

I opened it, stepped inside

The plastic Porta-Potty door clapped shut behind me I kneasn’t at the burrito stand There were no burrito smells There was noise Panic, froister that I was in the restroom at BB’s

Shouted commands, panicked screams Gunshots

I wanted to turn back to the door, to retreat to the field Instead I found a gun barrel pointed in my face I threw up unshots as he approached the toilet, and they sounded close Sound waves are a funny thing but he swore the noise was co from inside the blue plastic shitter

He reached the door and was about to yank it open when he had second thoughts Wait, if there were dudes with guns at the other end of the "door" or portal or worh it? Was that what he heard? If he opened it, would a hail of bullets fly out? Would a dude with aout at hi a shit when Dave burst in, so now the two of theht, pressed chest-to-chest in the tiny booth?

Unarmed and with no other plans for the day, John took a deep breath and pulled open the door

Filthy, che of Doritos on the plastic floor Empty toilet paper roll

John cli happened

You could feel when the doors worked, there was a change in the air, and a slight sas that comes out of aerosol cans of whipped cream before the cream comes out When he opened the door, he was unsurprised to find it was just the field again<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>