Snippet #1986848

City buses didn't have the good sense to have a clock built into the dashboard, but they did have a steering wheel beefy enough to accommodate the band of Mike's wristwatch. And looking at it, just before he and Scout got off to search for supplies, the former fireman noted that it was some time around one o'clock in the afternoon.

One o'clock P.M and change, that made it twelve days and eight hours since they had left the city. Just under two weeks, but to Mike it felt like a different life, a different world, perhaps a different universe. Many miles had been covered in those twelve days, many more than he would have believed possible. Usually, in disaster scenarios, the interstates were clogged up the back-end with traffic of all sorts in the outbound side, but it just wasn't the case with the virus. Yes, traffic in the outbound was congestive, but, surprisingly, the bus had made a good go of it for a few miles. Eventually, though, the leviathan of a machine had had to double back and take various side-roads and unbeaten paths to subvert them. Mike had to admire the machine's persistence; it'd gotten them much farther than he had expected it would, with its ramshackle modifications and add-ons. Even the shower--no, especially the shower--had looked like they would break within the first few miles of hard riding, but nope--the machine had held together.

Which is more than he could have said for their group. It had started out with four; him, Scout, and the original two, Pete and Martha. Between them, they had managed to build the bus and get out of the city; and what a week that had been, between scavenging and using Pete's experience as a contractor to modify the bus Mike thought he would have been stabbed, burnt or infected with the virus more times than he could count. But in the end, they had all made it out of the city, and from there things had looked easy. Then, a week later, Pete and Martha were gone. They had been out scavenging for gasoline, but in the end Scout and Mike had waited five hours--nothing. Pete and Martha never came back, and so they had moved on.

The next day, the gas siphon broke. Then the next day they'd been stopped by a bunch of thugs and had to give up some of their food for passage. In reality, things had just been a parade of bad luck on the way out of state.

At least he had Scout at his side. She seemed to be pretty apathetic towards him, and he didn't mind that--just the presence of another human being was good for him, regardless of whether or not they were talkative. Pete and Martha had talked quite a bit when they were around, and Mike often found himself at a loss for words. Now, though, there were enough words in a day for him. That, and Scout pulled her weight all the time. Mike liked that in a person.

But that was in the past, and now they were somewhere new. Mike remembered the stories his Pa would tell about this land out here. God's Country, he called it, always in that thick drawl he had--"Gawd's Country"--the mythical place where the ground and the sky met at a seamless, knife-sharp edge, where a man was supposedly able to make a name for himself with nothing more than sweat and perseverance. Mike didn't see much of that success out here right now, though: What he saw was dust, ghost towns, and one very long, very straight road. He'd found a new gas siphon in an old service station several miles down the road, but that place was long gone now. And what a place to run out of gas. It was right in the middle of the desert, of course, and in the middle of the day as well.

So here Mike was, wandering out into the desert with the siphon in one hand and several jerry cans strapped to his back with a frayed length of rope, with Scout several yards ahead. She found the farmhouse before he did; which was unsurprising. Her eyes were much sharper than his, which made things work (he had the brawn; she had the eyes). While Scout investigated the house, Mike wandered over to the barn, pulling the doors open slowly and blinking away the dust that had settled inside. He carefully wove his way through various pieces of farm equipment to the tractor, setting down the siphon and a jerry can as he carefully removed the gas cap, inserted the nozzle and started to pump. Time passed, and Mike worried the tank was empty, but eventually the splashing sound of gasoline filled the jerry can and Mike grinned. He was lucky, if only for today.

He was halfway through the first can when the window broke. Mike immediately assumed the worst scenario had transpired, and dropped the siphon clattering to the ground. He leapt over the hose and ran to the front of the barn, looking out to the farmhouse. "Scout?!" He shouted frantically from the barn. "You alright?"