by T M Edwards
“Right. But...look. I know we have to go. I believe it. If there’s even a chance we can get everyone back on the ground again, we have to fight for that chance. We can never rebuild the world if it’s just you, me and Zena wandering around outside trying to take care of people. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I hate that we had to leave them there with him.”
“Why didn’t I stay, then?”
He reached out and placed his hand over mine. “Would it be enough to say I couldn’t bear to make this trip without you?”
“No.” I knew him better than that. He might be in love with me, but he was still a rational and tactical thinker.
One of his trademark grins split his face, and it warmed my heart to see a little of the grumpy stoicism fade away. “Fine. I just thought we had a better chance if you came. Gimpy leg notwithstanding, you’ve actually got a cool head in a crisis. You’re a lot smarter than you’d like people to think, and we have a greater chance of finding this thing if I’m not alone. Zena would have driven me crazy within the first two hours. I probably would have ended up dumping her on the side of the road to walk home. The other two are too young and too old, obviously, and Dave...well, I may just barely trust Dave enough to leave him with our people, but I’d rather not have a stranger by my side on such an important mission.” He gave my hand a brief squeeze, then returned his grip to the steering wheel. “It’s important to be able to trust your partner.”
“Well, hey. At least I ranked above Zena and the new guy in your choice of people to die with.” I meant it as a joke, but his face sobered at my words.
“I hope it won’t come to that. But yes. If I have to die with anyone, Deidre Scott, I’d want it to be you.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, so I fell silent and watched as the sun crested the horizon and stained the landscape with shades of pink that soon faded to the pastel blue of morning.
***
“How far have we gone?” Sam had the atlas spread out on the hood of the car as I chewed my way through a chalky-tasting energy bar and Honey Badger streaked in circles around the car like a bat out of of hell. She looked ridiculous running at top speed, an ecstatic bark escaping her every few seconds. “You’d think we’d had you chained up for a month, silly dog,” I commented at her during one of her closer orbits. She ignored me to continue acting like a giant, spastic squirrel.
“By the odometer, about three hundred miles.”
“Amazing what kind of time you can do when there’s nobody to enforce the speed limit.”
My wry comment caused him to glance up at me, and he grinned. “But did you die?”
I wrinkled my face at him and wadded up the energy bar wrapper. Sam might be content becoming a lawless monster, but even now, I couldn’t bring myself to litter. I leaned back against the car and crossed my arms as I gazed out across the barren landscape and the gray, patched road. Three hundred miles and it still looks like an alien planet. “Where are we?”
“If I’m calculating everything correctly, the closest town is Scorpio, Utah.” He squinted at the map. “I mean Scipio. Next up is Wyoming.”
“Man, it’s amazing what a difference three hundred miles can make.” I drew my jacket closer around my body. I was used to the South, where stores immediately sold out of bread and milk if anyone saw a snowflake, and frost was something more often seen on the inside of a freezer than on the ground.
“This is nothing.” Sam straightened and closed the atlas, then gathered up the rest of the papers he’d spread around. “The question is, should we be checking towns for resources, or should we just get as far as we can, as quick as we can?”
“Well, we haven’t seen anybody in any town we’ve driven through. It’s reasonable to assume there might be food left. But we’ll waste gas getting it.”
Sam nodded.
“How far do you think we can get before the fuel runs out?”
“Conservative estimate? Given the gas in the trunk, assuming the car doesn’t break down, 800 miles.”
I groaned. “Sam, that still leaves us walking almost four hundred miles.”
“Hey, I said conservative estimate. If we go slow, like under 60, we can make it last longer, but we’ll also be on the road longer, and I don’t like the look of those clouds.”
“Yeah, but the longer we have to walk, the more chance we take of hitting a blizzard anyway.”
Neither of us voiced the obvious wrench in all of this planning: that once we get to Minot, we’d have no way to get back.
“Just let me outrun this storm and I’ll slow down, alright?”
I agreed with great reluctance. Walking a few dozen extra miles might not mean much to Sam, but the cold was making my ankle ache, and I wondered if Sam realized how much I was going to slow him down.
We called Honey Badger back and got back into our seats. I put one arm through the space between my seat and Sam’s to scratch the dog behind the ears as Sam pulled the car off of the shoulder and back onto the highway.
“Poor thing. You have no idea what we’re getting you into, do you?”
Honey Badger tilted her head at me, and I couldn’t help chuckling at the way her giant, ragged ears kept moving even when her head stopped. I couldn’t believe I’d ever found her frightening. Now, the scars on her face just made her look a little sad. She licked my hand and let out a tiny whine with her eyes fixed on mine.
“I swear you’d talk to us if you could.” At that, she opened her mouth and her giant tongue lolled out in what I felt was the dog equivalent of a grin. She placed one dusty paw over my arm and proceeded to lick it like her life depended on it. “Ew, gross.” I pulled my hand back, which earned me a cold, damp nose in the ear. “Sam, your dog is gross.”
“You keep calling her mine. I’m pretty sure she likes you as much as me.”
“You’re the one who fed her and made her like us to begin with. I was perfectly content to run away from the scary noise in the casino, but you had to walk right toward it, and look where that got us.”
Sam shrugged. “You never know when she might come in useful.”
I swatted her nose away from my ear. “Until then, she’s just going to eat our food. Maybe we should stop at the next town and see if they have anything.”
He just nodded in response. I leaned back against my seat’s headrest and watched the world go by as the newly-refilled gas tank needle inched ever so slowly downward. I glared at that needle, as if the force of my will could force it to stay up longer, and grant us more miles in the comfort of the car rather than on foot.
Soon, Sam pointed out the tall sign of an interstate gas station, and within a couple minutes, we’d made it down the ramp and into the parking lot. When I opened my door, cold air blew into the car with enough force to throw my hair in my face.
“Look, Sam. That pickup could have gas in it.”
He nodded. “I’ll check. You look inside.”
Maybe it was the gas station’s lack of proximity to any populated areas, but it was surprisingly untouched. I grabbed a shopping basket and grabbed all the healthier food before moving on to the candy. Drinks would weigh us down once we had to start walking, so I only took a couple gallons worth of soft drinks and a few more of water.
“Ha! Jackpot.” The other aisle actually had a couple small bags of dog food. “Maybe something meant for you will get rid of that killer gas.” Honey Badger sat on her haunches watching me, and the tip of her tail wiggled like she wasn’t sure if I was scolding her.
My heart soared when I reached the other side of the shelf. Packets of painkillers got to join the food. Maybe I’d actually get to enjoy a day or two without pain.
I had to squash the temptation to load everything in sight into the baskets. It would weigh the car down, and once we reached the end of our gas tank, even if we were able to find some sort of rolling cart or wagon like I’d used last time, it would just be more stuff to slow us down.
Just as I was stuffing the last few
things into the basket, Sam stuck his head through the door. “It has gas. Hey, grab those clothes. Can’t hurt to have a few more layers for when it gets really cold.
I shuddered. I was already freezing, and we hadn’t even hit Wyoming yet.
After pulling the t-shirts down, all of which bore some cheesy graphic on them related to the region, I headed back for the car with a full basket on each arm, limping across the parking lot as Honey Badger danced around me, her nose in the air.
“Hey. You trip me, there’ll be nobody to open this food for you. I know it smells good, but you gotta wait.”
She ignored me, and I was forced to kick her out of my way more than once before we reached the car. Once there, I set the baskets on the top lest the dog tear into them. Sam was at the pickup truck with a couple of gas cans on the ground and a hose.
It took us the better part of a quarter hour to get everything arranged, but by the time we headed for the interstate with the afternoon sun and the approaching weather system at our backs, my heart was feeling much lighter about our whole situation. Though we’d had to resort to pulling buckets and containers out of the gas station to hold all the gas, and the trunk sloshed every time we hit a bump, we’d managed to gather enough fuel that it was possible we might actually make it to Minot without having to walk.
“It’s about damn time something went right,” Sam remarked as we left the ramp and settled into a respectable pace on the highway. The clouds to the west grew closer, and were now threatening to blot out the sun with their slate-hued bellies.
“Don’t say that. You’ll jinx us.”
He shrugged. “We already knew this storm was coming. Doesn’t hurt to enjoy our good fortune for a couple hours before it hits.”
“Right.” I tried to join him in his enjoyment, but within minutes my elation was eclipsed by the roiling cloudbank. The temperature in the car felt like it had dropped another ten degrees, and I found myself reaching for the heater. “Any chance it’s just rain?”
Sam spared a glance in my direction. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
I groaned, and watched the car’s speedometer move upward as Sam floored the gas pedal in an attempt to outrace the lowering clouds.
11: Whiteout
“Damnit, I can’t see a thing.”
“Well, slow down, then!” My knuckles were almost as white as the driving snow outside the windows. “If you wreck the car, we’ve still got a really long way to walk.”
The lump in my throat relaxed infinitesimally as Sam eased his foot off the gas. My heart was still pounding in my ears, and my stomach was a ball of nerves.
The storm had descended with such ferocity it blocked the sun completely. Except for the clock on the dash and Sam’s watch, we had no way of telling if it was day or night. Despite it still being in that zone somewhere between late afternoon and early evening, there was little light outside except for the beam of the headlights.
“Shouldn’t we stop and wait it out?”
“We risk not being able to move at all once it’s over. I want to get as far as we can before that happens.”
I fought the urge to cry as I swallowed down my anxiety and squeezed my eyes shut. “Just tell me when it’s over.”
“Deidre.” I could barely hear his voice through the howling of the wind. “It’s gonna be okay. Trust me.” For a second, his hand touched mine, then it was gone.
When I regained the courage needed to open my eyes, it wasn’t any better. I’d never seen snow like this. I didn’t know how Sam could even see the road. All I saw was driving white, with maybe a hint of gray where the road was. Sam leaned forward in his seat, his eyes fixed on the road. I reached back to touch Honey Badger, whether to reassure her or myself, I wasn’t sure.
All this. All this effort, all this time, and now we might die in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere. Nobody will ever find our bodies. Maybe in twenty years, if there’s anybody left, they’ll find two human skeletons and one dog locked in this car.
The wind howled, and the entire car shuddered with the force of its wrath. The car skidded on an icy patch, and Sam barely managed to avoid letting it slide off into the ditch. As soon as he’d regained control of the vehicle, he let it slow to a stop and put it in park.
“That’s it. We’re staying put till this is over. I hope you like being stuck in a tiny space with a guy and a dog and no shower.” His smile was wry, but his eyes told me he was fighting an emotion far darker.
I reached out and touched his face. “We’ll be alright. I know we will.” I really didn’t know anything of the sort. But I could see the beginnings of one of his downward spirals, and I needed to reassure him before he went into the kind of panic that would be made worse by his inability to walk it off.
“I know.” He leaned his head back against the headrest of his seat and closed his eyes. His throat moved as he swallowed. “We just have to wait.”
“Yes. Wait. It has to end eventually.” His hand sought mine, and I grasped his clammy fingers between my palms.
“You’ve come so far, Sam. You will make it through this, too.”
His eyes popped open, but he stared at the ceiling of the car rather than look at me. “I’m not worried about me. Deidre.” He turned his head to meet my gaze. “If one of us doesn’t make it, I’d rather it be me than you.”
“Don’t talk like that.” My voice was scolding, even though I knew full well I’d been having the exact same thoughts as he was. “We’ll make it.”
“I know.” I knew he was just saying it to make me stop my pep talk, but I allowed him to stop my weak encouragement. I watched him as he closed his eyes again, watched his face as he took deep breaths, until finally the tension on his face eased and his breathing became shallower. His grip on my hand relaxed as he fell asleep.
He’s exhausted. Maybe he hasn’t been sleeping as well as I thought. Adrenaline could only do so much to keep us going. After weeks and months of it, we were all standing on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown. Even those who didn’t deal with anxiety to begin with. Their nerves were nearly as fried as ours. Some became hysterical, while my brain’s emotion centers seemed to shut down the worse things got. I could feel, but it felt like trying to touch a sharp edge through a dozen layers of fabric. Everything was muted, blunted, obscured. I supposed I should be grateful. In my previous life, I would have been non-functional in the face of so many of the obstacles that had plagued our community in the past weeks.
I settled my head against my own chair, and after a glance at Honey Badger to make sure she was okay, I let my own eyes drift closed.
***
I woke to a blast of cold air, and Sam scolding the dog.
“Hey! Get out of there!”
Sitting up, I opened bleary eyes to find Honey Badger in the driver’s seat with her tongue lolling out of her mouth like she was laughing at him. Sam held the back door on my side open, and grimaced at her.
“Damn dog.” He slammed the door closed, and trudged around the car. This was when I realized the snow had stopped falling, and the only light outside was the beams of the headlights, which highlighted Sam as he walked by. He opened his own door, letting another draft of frigid air into the car, and shoved Honey Badger. “Get in the back. You don’t have a driver’s license.” After she’d begrudgingly scrambled between our seats, managing to hit me in the face with her tail in the process, Sam swung into his seat and closed his door.
“Holy crap, why were you out there with no coat?” I watched him shiver and try to warm his hands by blowing on them. He turned the key in the car’s ignition and it rumbled to life.
“I would’ve had to stand out there longer to unpack the back seat and find it than I did to let the dog out.”
“Fair enough.” I looked around through all the windows at the barren, snow-covered landscape. “How much do you think we got?”
“Hard to tell with all the wind. Six inches maybe.”
“I guess it could be worse.”
“Oh, it could have been much worse.”
A few moments later, after we’d taken turns looking out the opposite window while the other got out of the car and took care of their own bladder’s needs, we were on the move. The sky must have still been overcast, because all I could see was black. A few errant flakes still drifted downward, but the worst of it seemed to be over. The only light was the car’s headlights, which Sam had turned on high. The two beams of light showed nothing but a couple dozen feet of snow-covered road.
“Why couldn’t the egg be in the South?” The miserable question was prompted by yet another instance of the car rolling across a patch of road that was more ice than snow. “There’s no snow and ice in the South.”
“Because that would just be too easy. Don’t worry. Once the ground freezes, it will get better.” I stared at him in confusion until he noticed. “The reason there’s ice is because the snow melts and refreezes. Once it’s cold enough to avoid melting, we’ll just have powder, not ice. Trust me, a couple inches of snow is much preferable to a half inch of ice.”
