Mt St Helens

Crispy Zombie Roadtrip

The landscape changed gradually, from back road bumpy to broken asphalt, abandoned cars, and wreckage of everything that used to be ordinary. Thirty miles out, the ash started spiraling and dancing. Mini twisters. Fine gray powder coated every surface and softened the edges of the world. The ruins looked like they'd been there for centuries, instead of weeks.

Twenty miles out, the trees thinned. The ones still standing were stripped bare, branches reached like fingers against a sky that had never quite returned to blue. The ground was darker. Volcanic soil absorbed the light like a black hole.

The Burned Ones were everywhere.

Not attacking. They moved alongside Sweet Salvation in loose formation. Crackling softly, heading in the same direction, like pilgrims on a mission.

“Don't look at them,” Nikki said.

Daniel kept both hands on the wheel. Eyes forward. “How many?”

“Too many,” Mina said from behind her equipment. “And more joining from the east. The thermal map looks like…” She paused. “Like tributaries. Everything flowing toward the same point.”

“The mountain,” Ignacia said.

Nobody answered. The answer was obvious.

Alyssa had the music running low. Bass frequencies just enough to keep the Burned Ones at a respectful distance without agitating them. The wrong move here, too loud, too aggressive, and the loose formation surrounding them would become something none of them wanted to consider.

“There,” Daniel said suddenly, hitting the brakes.

The thermal signature was odd.

Every other signature on Mina's equipment moved toward the mountain with purposeful flow. This one moved against it. Erratic. Desperate. Like a fish fighting upstream.

“Partially converted,” Mina said, tracking it. “Advanced. But fighting. Actively fighting.”

“Fighting the pull,” Ignacia said. She was already opening the door. “That's not easy. Trust me.”

“Ignacia…” Nikki started.

She was already out, moving toward the tree line where the signature pulsed. The Burned Ones nearby paused, tracked her movement, but didn't follow. She blazed just enough to make them reconsider.

Ignacia found him on his knees in the volcanic soil. Both hands pressed flat against the ground. His skin was cracked at the wrists. Amber light seeped through the fissures. His breathing was ragged. Controlled.

He heard her approach and his head snapped up.

“My little girl,” The words came out before anything else. Before his own name, his condition, his obvious pain. “Somewhere back on the road. Please. She's six years old. She was next to me and then…” His voice broke. “The ones moving toward the mountain, she got scared, she ran and I couldn't—I can't go back far enough, every step away from it costs me and she's out there alone now…”

“Stop.” Ignacia crouched in front of him. “What's her name?”

“Rita.”

“We'll find her.” Ignacia looked back at Sweet Salvation. “Daniel. Turn around.”

They drove back slow. The Burned Ones parting reluctantly around the truck's reversal like a current around a rock. George, he'd managed to reveal his name between ragged breaths, George Russell, a middle school science teacher, walked alongside the truck. One hand pressed against its metal side. The cold of it helping him focus. Every step away from the mountain cost him visibly. His breath more labored. The glow in his veins pulsed harder as he resisted.

But he kept walking.

“How long have you been fighting it?” Ignacia asked through the open window.

“Since Amboy?” He didn't look at her. Eyes scanning the road, the ditches, the burned tree line. “Weeks. It was manageable at first. Then we got closer to the mountain and it just…” He pressed his hand harder against the truck's side. “It's like a magnet. You can feel the pull. Even when you don't want to go, you can feel it wanting you.”

“Did you see the ones going toward it? The organized ones?”

George's jaw tightened. “They had people with them. Willing ones and some not.” He paused. “There's someone up there. Leading them. I don't know who. Rita saw one of the glowing ones up close and she just ran. I couldn't follow fast enough. She isn't infected & I don't know how to keep her safe. I'm struggling.”

Mina's equipment chirped.

“Small signature,” she said. “Fifty yards. In the ditch, on the right.”

---

Rita made herself very small.

She'd found a gap between a fallen log and an overturned car. She'd pressed herself into it with Mr. Buttons held tight against her chest. One button eye, singed ribbon, and a missing ear. She clutched him like he was the last solid thing in the world.

Rita watched the Burned Ones move past her on the road. They were not like her daddy. They looked like him, but daddy was fighting to stay daddy.

---

Alyssa spotted her. “There. I see her.”

The truck stopped. Doors opene slowly. No sudden movements. The Burned Ones nearby slowed, but kept moving. The mountain's pull stronger than their hunger. For now.

Ignacia stepped toward the ditch.

Rita's eyes found her immediately.

“You. You moved my chair,” Rita said. “You're The Nurse!”

Ignacia stopped. “What?”

“The orange chairs. You had yellow gloves on. You moved me to the chair where you could see me & keep me safe.” Rita's grip on Mr. Buttons adjusted.

The hospital. The first wave. Dozens of children in orange plastic chairs. While the world outside was ending. Ignacia searched her memory. Before times were —fractured. Incomplete.

“I remember,” Ignacia said softly. It felt true. Rita needed it to be true.

“RITA.”

George's voice came from behind the truck, cracked grief and relief. Desperate, human love. He was around the side of the truck before anyone could react. He dropped to his knees in the ash at the edge of the ditch.

Rita stood up very straight and climbed out of the ditch with Mr. Buttons under her arm.

“Daddy you found me. I knew you'd keep your promise," she said.

George made a sound that wasn't a word.

He held her. Carefully. His arms shook with the effort of controlling the heat. Keeping himself contained. She pressed her face against his neck and her tears evaporated.

“Daddy, you're still warm.”

“I know, baby.” His voice was barely sound. “I know.”

The crew stood in a loose half-circle, protective of thos sweet little human. Daniel turned away. Melissa pressed her fingers to her mouth. Even Nikki, clipboard in hand, found something very important to study in the middle distance.

Ignacia felt the warmth inside her surge then settle. Human connection beneath the warmth. Love.

The pull surged. George's breathing changed. His hands trembled. His veins pulsed brighter. The cracks in his wrists widened slightly.

Rita backed away.

“Is it calling you again?” she asked.

“Yes,” George said. He wouldn't lie to her.

“Is it loud?”

“Pretty loud.” He touched her face. The gentlest possible contact. “But you're louder.”

Ignacia crouched beside them. “George. We can help you fight it. But it takes time we don't have right now. We need to get closer to the mountain. We need to understand what's up there.”

His eyes found hers. “You're going toward it?”

“We have to.”

“You need to take Rita somewhere safe first.” He looked at Rita. “She can't go near the mountain. Whatever's up there—whoever's leading those organized ones—” He shook his head. “Not near her.”

“Amboy's empty,” Nikki said quietly.

“Fifteen miles back, before Amboy. Small group. Farmhouse off the main road.” Ignacia looked at George. “We can take Rita there. Leave her safe.”

“No.” Rita's voice was small but absolute. “I'm not going somewhere else to wait. It's you & me forever. You promised.”

“Rita—” George started.

“You said to find the people who fight.” She looked at Ignacia. “You fight. I want to be with the people who fight.”

The silence that followed was the kind that meant everyone was thinking the same thing and nobody wanted to say it.

Nikki said it. “We can't take a six-year-old toward that mountain.”

“She can't stay alone,” Melissa countered.

“The farmhouse—”

“With strangers?” Alyssa shook her head. “After everything she's already been through?”

George looked at Ignacia, “Can you keep her safe? In the truck. Away from whatever's up there when you find it.”

“Yes,” Ignacia said. The word simple. Absolute.

“Can you—” His voice dropped. “When this thing is over. When you come back from the mountain. Can you help me? Is there still something in me worth helping?”

Ignacia looked at him. At the cracks spreading up his forearms. The amber glow that pulsed against his will.

He'd walked away from the mountain for his daughter. Against the current of two hundred converted pilgrims and whatever was calling them from the peak. He'd pressed his hands into cold volcanic soil and fought it, mile by mile, because Rita was somewhere on the road behind him.

“Yes,” she said. “There is absolutely something worth helping.”

George unwrapped his jacket and put it around Rita's shoulders. It swallowed her. She let it. He whispered something against her hair. Private, just for her.

Then he stepped back. One step. Two. Each one visible effort.

“I'm going to find somewhere very cold,” he said to Ignacia. “A creek. To anchor myself. I'll be here when you come back. Find me. Bring Rita to me.”

“We will come back,” she said.

He looked at Rita one more time. She raised one hand. The ASL sign, I Love You. 🤟

---

Rita sat in the back of Sweet Salvation between Melissa and Alyssa. Her dad's jacket pooled around her. Mr. Buttons in his usual position under her left arm. She watched the mountain grow larger through the windshield with the expression of someone taking careful inventory.

“His ribbon's still red,” she said eventually.

“What?” Melissa asked.

“Mr. Buttons. His ribbon.” She held up the bear. The ribbon was singed at the edges, darker than it used to be. “Daddy burned his ear but the ribbon stayed red. Mama picked that color.” A pause. “She loved red. It means love.”

Nobody asked about Mama.

“Is daddy going to be okay?” Rita asked Ignacia.

Ignacia reached back with her heat-sense. Found George's signature behind them. Moving away from the mountain. Cold, determined, and present.

“He's still moving away from the mountain,” she said.

“That's hard for him.”

“Very hard.”

Rita tucked Mr. Buttons firmly under her arm and looked at the mountain filling the windshield. Ash fell in lazy spirals from somewhere above them. The thermal signatures on Mina's equipment multiplied the closer they got.

Nikki opened her log.

Wrote one line:

George Russell. Partially converted. Fighting. Worth saving. Loves his daughter. Love winning.

Then she underlined it.

The Prophet was waiting.

And they were almost there.

---

My Creativity is fueled by tea. Lots of tea.