quiet snores from the chair in the corner. I awoke the next morning to sunlight streaming in through the dingy curtains and Ben emptying a bag of junk food onto the table.
“Morning,” he greeted, and though his voice was solemn, it lacked the despair of the night before. “I thought you might be hungry, so I raided the snack machines by the office. I, uh, hope you don’t mind Doritos and Twinkies for breakfast.”
I smiled and struggled to my feet, brushing my hair back. “Any Ho Hos in the bunch?” I asked, walking up to the table.
“Mmm...no, sorry.” Ben held up a package. “But I do have Zingers.”
We smiled and ate our hideously unhealthy breakfast without complaint, knowing food was an unknown equation. The days of easy access were over. Places like McDonald’s or Wendy’s, where you could just walk in and order a hot breakfast, were a thing of the past. And many of the big superstores had been raided, gutted and picked clean when the chaos began. I wondered how long it would be before things went back to normal. I wondered if things would ever go back to normal.
“How far is it to your parents’ farm?” I asked, once the chip bags were empty and plastic wrappers covered the table. Ben handed me a Diet Coke, and I washed down the cloying sweetness in my throat.
Ben shrugged. “About a fourteen-hour drive, if the roads are clear. We should get there by this evening if we don’t run into anything.”
Like rabid zombie vampires. I shivered and shook that thought away. “You’ll be home soon, then. That’s good.”
“Yeah.” Ben didn’t sound entirely convinced. I glanced up and saw him watching me intently, his chin on the back of his laced hands. A flutter went through my stomach. Abruptly, he stood and started cleaning up the piles of wrappers scattered about the table, before he stopped, shaking his head. “Sorry. Old habits. Mom would always have us clear the dinner table for her. Come on.” He grabbed the shotgun and opened the door for me. “Let’s get out of here. The sooner we’re on the road, the sooner we’ll arrive.”
We piled into the truck, after stashing the shotgun safely in the backseat, and Ben stuck the key in the ignition. “Home,” he muttered in a voice barely above a whisper, and turned the key.
Nothing happened.
Chapter Seven
My heart stood still. Ben swore quietly and turned the key again. Same result. Nothing. The engine lay still and cold and dead, and no amount of jiggling the key or pumping the gas pedal seemed to revive it.
“Dammit.” Ben jumped out of the driver’s seat and stalked to the front, opening the hood with a rusty squeak. I watched him through the window, obeying when he told me to slide into the driver’s seat and try the ignition again. We worked for nearly twenty minutes, but the old truck remained stubbornly silent.
Ben dropped the hood with a bang, his face sweaty and grim. I peeked out the driver’s side window, trying to stay calm. “No luck?”
He shook his head. “Fuses are blown, I think. That, or the battery is dead. Either way, I’m not going to be able to get it started without jumper cables and another running engine. Dammit.” He rubbed his jaw. “Looks like we’re hoofing it.”
“To Illinois?” The thought was staggering. “A fourteen-hour drive will probably take us a week or more of walking, and that’s if we don’t run into anything.”
“I don’t see any other way, do you?” Ben looked around helplessly, hands on his hips. “We’ll look for another vehicle down the road, but we can’t stay here. I know, it scares me, too. But we have to get moving.”
Daunting was the word that came to mind—hiking across a lawless, empty, plague-ridden country, where society had broken down and humans were just as likely to turn on you as help—it was a frightening thought. Especially now, with those...things out there. But Ben was right; we couldn’t stay here. We had to continue.
Ben dug an old green backpack out from under the seats, and we raided the broken vending machines again, stocking up on sweets, chips and soda, as much as the pack could carry. Hefting it to his back, slinging the gun over one shoulder, he beckoned to me, and we started down the empty road, feeling like the only two people left on Earth.
* * *
The highway continued, weaving through hills and forest, past side roads and off-ramps that led to unknown places. Occasionally, we passed cars on the road, pulled over on the shoulder, abandoned in ditches, or sometimes just stopped in the middle of the lane. Once, I thought I saw a person in one of the cars in a ditch, a woman slumped against the dashboard, and hurried over to help. But she was long dead, and so was her little boy in the backseat. Sickened, I turned away, hoping their deaths had been swift, and the images continued to haunt me the rest of the afternoon.
Ben inspected every car we came across, searching around the dashboard and glove compartments, hoping for a lucky break. But except for the dead woman’s car, none of them had keys, and hers was too damaged to use. Another, a van, seemed to be in good condition, but the tires were flat. I asked him once if we could hot-wire a vehicle into running, but neither of us had a clue how to do that. So we kept walking as the sun slid across the sky and the shadows around us lengthened.
“Here,” Ben said, handing me an open can of Sprite when we stopped for a break. I took a long swig and handed it back as he sat beside me on the guardrail. We’d been hiking uphill for what had seemed like miles, and I could feel the heat of his body against mine, our shoulders and arms lightly touching. My stomach did a weird little twirl, especially when his large hand came to rest over mine on the railing.
“I think we’re coming up on a town,” he said, after finishing off the can and tossing it into the ditch. “If we are, it might be a good idea to stop and look around for a car. And food. Real food, anyway.” He glanced at the backpack, lying open at our feet. Twinkies, Snowballs, chips and candy wrappers stood out brightly against the dull gray of the pavement. “I might slip into a sugar-induced coma if I eat one more Twinkie.”
I smiled, liking this lighter, easygoing version of Ben. Out in the sunlight, away from all the blood, death, horror and despair, things didn’t look as bleak.
I grinned at him, bumping his shoulder, just as he looked back at me. And, very suddenly, we were staring at each other on a lonely, empty road, miles from anywhere.
The late-afternoon sun slanted through the branches of the pine trees, turning his hair golden-brown, his eyes hazel. I could see rings of amber and green around the coffee-colored irises. They were beautiful, and they held my gaze, soft and tender, and a little bit afraid. As if Ben was unsure where we stood, if this was all one-sided.
My heart pounded. Ben waited, not moving, though his eyes never left mine. The ball was in my court. I licked my lips and suddenly found myself leaning toward him.
The growl of a car engine echoed, unnaturally loud in the silence, making us both jerk up. Gazing down the road, I saw a flash of metal in the sun, speeding toward us, and my heart leaped. Ben stood, grabbing the shotgun from where it lay against the railing, as a rusty brown pickup roared around the bend and skidded to a halt in a spray of gravel.
My senses prickled a warning, and I moved closer to Ben as the doors opened and three big, rough-looking guys stepped out into the road. They looked related, brothers maybe, blond and tanned, with the same watery blue eyes. I caught the
