Seven

    My sister and I looked up at our three-story brick house with a heightened sense of awareness and a deep concern for our well-being, two approaches that we had never considered would ever be a possibility when entering into our own home. The others had made it in and out of their houses without any trouble with whatever they could grab in five minutes. While both Harry and Brandon had encountered a wandering corpse or two upon entering their houses, neither had endured any attack. I was currently standing on the top step of the bus, the doors wide open and urging me to step onto the sidewalk where I would enter into the house on 19-A Wilson Road without any inkling of what was residing in my own place of residence. Although the outside had not changed in the past week since I last saw it, it still seemed so foreign to me.

            “Can’t you just get a bag for me?” my sister murmured behind me.

            I looked over my right shoulder to see her blue eyes round with unspoken fear. Her blonde hair skimmed over her shoulders and a light breeze brushed the end of her pink and yellow dress. She pulled her pale sweater closer around her boney arms and anticipated my response.

            “No, Lainey,” I said back. “I already have to grab Brittany’s bag. I cannot go for a third.”

            “It’s fine. She can stay in here. I can get my own bag,” my best friend said from where she sat behind the wheel. She made to get up.

            I turned to her. “No. My sister needs to do this. I need someone I trust to stay behind on the bus,” I murmured the last part with a soft sternness. Brittany nodded her head and sat back in the seat.

            My sister had never been brave. This version of her that I knew now was not the version that I had bonded with as children. She was once funny and kind, her natural golden brown hair always cut to a bob right under her chin. She had worn amber rimmed glasses and never cared what others had thought of her. But when we had moved to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma so that my father could do battalion command for two years, she met a girl that forever changed her. Her desire to be the head cheerleader, the greatest flier, and most popular girl in school caused her to become bulimic in just the seventh grade. I lost my sister that year to a stranger and all that was left behind was the empty shell of a patronizing, worldly primmadonna. And I hated her for it. Even now, when our most recent home seemed to become just as hollow, I couldn’t find it in my heart to consider the fears that my sister now held.

            “Come on,” I muttered. “Let’s go.”

            I heavily stepped down from the bus. My sister slowly followed. I scanned the front yard and narrowed my eyes so that I could try to detect any movement behind the bushes that my mom had around the porch. Seeing nothing, I motioned for my sister to follow me. We walked up the four steps to the porch and I pulled opened the screen door. It didn’t make a noise. It never did. I could feel my sister’s body warmth as she stayed close behind. I could feel her erratic breathing along the back of my neck.

            I put my hand on the antiqued brass doorknob before my sister could see that the front door was already propped open. I stepped into the mudroom where my mother used to make us take off all of our shoes. I didn’t bother this time and then opened the second glass door into the foyer. The house was still clean. Nothing looked broken or seemed out of place. There were no trails of blood or broken glass that would signal that there had been a struggle. My sister stayed in the foyer as I entered into the living room.

            The brick houses on Wilson Road were old, close to two-hundred years. There was actually a rumor that the one connected to ours was haunted by the disgruntled spirit of some General. My siblings and I used to scare ourselves when walking down into the basement. The walls were made of old gray stone and there were three rooms off to the left. We were told that they belonged to slaves and that sometimes their cries could be heard. There was also a wardrobe left to rot in the last room where the water heater would sometimes growl. But horrors stories like that didn’t seem to matter anymore, not when we were actually living in one.

            It seemed as though for every house that we moved to my mother would find an excuse to go shopping for new furniture sets for each room. In this house, she had settled on red suede sofas; the lamps, curtains, and candles accented with gold. There was a fireplace, but we never used it. My father had tried once, but a horrible smell followed by black smoke had quickly filled up the house. We opted for fake glowing logs after that.

            There was a light layer of dust along the mantle. It was very faint, my mother had never been one for dusting. We never really seemed to stay in one place long enough for it to collect in massive amounts. I ran my finger along the top of the mantle where three rectangular patches were.

            “They made it out,” I whispered.

            “How do you know?” my sister asked. She had walked the three steps up to the first landing and was standing with her hand on the rounded banister.

            “The pictures are gone,” I answered. “We both know those would have been the first thing mom took if she ever had to leave the house in a hurry.”

            Both my sister and I jumped as there was a sudden rattle upstairs. I moved from the fireplace and walked back into the foyer. My sister seemed frozen in place, her face growing white. The rattle continued. The noise began to role. Our attention was turned to the top of the steps where a small glass ball began dropping one step after the other. The heavy object made a deep noise as it hit each wooden step. It rolled along the upper landing before continuing down the steps once more. As it rolled between my sisters legs and down the last three steps before stopping in the foyer, I realized that it had been a miniature pool ball from the set that was in our younger brothers’ room.

            I looked back to the top of the steps, but there was no other noise or movement. I pulled the 9mm baretta from where it had been tucked in the sweats along my lower back and began walking towards the steps. The polymer coated metal of the semi-automatic pistol felt warm against my skin. I gripped it with both hands, aiming it slightly downward like I had seen on the television. It didn’t matter that my father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, we had never talked about guns. We had never talked about anything that he has done or did while serving the country.

            “Audrey…”

            “Don’t move,” I hissed.

            I passed my sister on the landing and continued up the stairs, one creaky step at a time. It was one of the worst parts about living in an old house: the floor always creaked. The doors may be silent, but that doesn’t matter when the floors always make noise. I had been holding my breath, and finally had to let it go as I made it to the middle landing. I raised the pistol a bit as I walked the remaining steps up to the hallway.

            Immediately to my left was the doorway to my parent’s bedroom. My dad’s black boots were lined up along the wall. My mother’s brown loafers looked so small compared to them. From where I stood at the top of the stairs, Tony and Aaron’s bedroom was diagonal to my right. The door was wide open and their toys were scattered across the navy blue carpet. However, it wasn’t just numerous half put-together Transformers or colorful Legos sitting on those fibers, there was a very real and very hungry creature staring at me from the doorway. Her neck was strained, as though her head was too heavy to be supported. Her back was hunched and her jaw was wide open. Raspy grunts came from her mouth, like she had asthma. Her jaw was detached, hanging from her face with a few tendons and scraps of skin.

            She let out a most volatile scream, her yellow eyes carrying a reddish ring to them. She bolted forward, her arms reaching for me. I quickly went down one step and pivoted so that all of her body weight was thrust over the railing. Both my hands gripped the pistol tightly and I hit her over the back of her head with it, forcing the rest of her body to go flying over the rail. She hit the wooden floor with a sickening thud, her skull breaking open. My mother’s floor was now covered in crimson blood and bits of gray organ.

            Lainey couldn’t even muster up a genuine scream. She bolted up the stairs, her eyes glued to the creature that now lay still on the ground.

            “Is it…”

            My hands were gripping the pistol so tight that I almost couldn’t feel them anymore. I leaned over the rail to look down in the foyer. She was wearing a cadet uniform, the black fabric glossy with bodily fluids. Patches of her hair were missing, and the bun that once sat neatly at the nape of her neck was now a mess.

            “No,” I shook my head. “It’s nobody.”

            But she wasn’t nobody. She had been someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, maybe even someone’s girlfriend. She had once been somebody who was going to become a strong leader, be inspiration for other women, and serve America with pride. And now she was dead. Dead dead. And laying on my foyer, no longer with a face.

            I couldn’t dwell too much on it. I could feel our five minutes slipping away. I grabbed the door to my parent’s room and slammed it shut. I did the same to my brother’s, to the bathroom on the right, and to the guest bedroom at the very end of the hall. Then my sister and I ran up the back set of helical stairs that led to the third floor. It had been designated just ours, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a lounge area. My parents had allowed for us to take it over and make it our own.

            My sister delicately went into her room while I went to mine. Brittany’s suitcase was still at the foot of my bed, packed. I opened my closet and pulled out my zebra print suitcase for when I traveled. I didn’t have time to think about coordinating outfits or grabbing the best shoes that would match. I grabbed whatever I could and just shoved it into the suitcase. After what Jorge had done to me, trying to get dressed up and look pretty didn’t seem to matter anymore.

            Although my room had two bay windows, Lainey’s had a wall made of mirrors. While I liked to sit and daydream as I looked out at the Hudson River, my sister loved to dance, so when picking out rooms in this house, it had been the easiest and only mutual decision that we had ever made. I peaked my head around the doorway to my sister’s room. Her hot pink suitcase was sitting out on her bed, barely packed. Instead, she was standing by the foot of her bed, staring down at the small hideaway door. It had always reminded me of the small door in the Alice In Wonderland film. It didn’t lead anywhere, just gave a dark view of the insulation and framing of the wall between our rooms.

            “What are you doing?” I said, walking into the bedroom.

            “Remember when we first moved here and we found this door?” she muttered as though in a trance. “Every kid who lived in this house before us would sign their name on the door before they moved…Do you think we should write our names on the door?”

            My sister had been holding a pen, which she now had outstretched in my direction. I left the suitcases by the door as I crossed her room. I took the pen and kneeled down. My eyes scanned over the fifteen signatures that were inscribed on the back of the door. Some were faded, others poorly scribbled. I etched my name into the door before handing the pen to my sister. I watched as she wrote her name in big, bubbly font, the type of font that should be a Microsoft Word option. She finished it with a heart. Our signatures looked happy, as though a great mass of terror wasn’t existing outside when we wrote them.

            Lainey finished her packing in silence. I didn’t question her about her clothing choices, only rolled my eyes in privacy. Her suitcase was bigger than mine. She had once memorized the numbers of my father’s credit card and purchased over one thousand dollars in make up from Sephora. My parents still hard her working to pay it off, but I guess that didn’t matter anymore.

            There was no way to silence our suitcases as they dropped from one creaky step to the next, so all we could do was push them down the stairs faster until we were in the foyer. My sister and I cautiously stepped around the dead woman before leaving the house. Brittany opened the bus doors for us and immediately shut them after my sister and I got inside.

            “About time,” cried Brittany. “That was eight minutes!”

            “In my defense, since there were three suitcases for three people, we probably should have been given fifteen minutes,” I responded with a light smirk.

            “Whatever,” Brittany scowled. “You had me worried sick.”

            I ignored my best friend’s motherly tone, grinning amused as I tossed the suitcases into an empty seat. I looked down the aisle to see a colorful array of suitcases, backpacks, and knapsacks in every other aisle. Seven pairs of eyes were also staring up at me.

            “Well…what now?” wondered Brandon.

            And then it occurred to me: there was no ‘now what.’ The plan had only been to return to West Point, and now that there was no West Point, there was no other planned alternative. These kids looked to me as a leader, but I was a leader without a plan. There had never been an alternative to getting home. Never.

            “We drive,” I responded.

            “Drive where?” questioned Destiny.

            “Anywhere,” I breathed. “Anywhere you want to go that you could never go to before.”

            Harry let loose a sad smile, one I had seen on the small boy’s face many times before in the hallways of our high school. “You’re asking a bus full of army brats where they want to go,” he sighed. “When we’ve all been everywhere.”

            I didn’t want to be the one standing at the front of the bus anymore with numerous inquisitive and desolate faces staring back at me. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend that I was sitting in my bay window, looking out at the river where people were sailing their boats and laughing. Instead, I was on a bus, with students of different cliques, being asked to take them somewhere. It was a whole new kind of terror.

            “Wherever we’re going, we better go there fast,” Andrew stated. “Looks like the mess hall just let out.”

            He had been staring out the back emergency door where at the other end of Wilson Road there was a giant mass of walking corpses. Most were dressed in cadet uniforms and coming from the direction of the academy. They weren’t coming at a violent charge, but they were moving fast enough to cause me to switch places with Brittany and start the bus in a hurry.

            I drove through West Point, back in the direction that we came. I passed through Thayer Gate and continued through Highland Falls. We passed the West Point Museum on the left and the Sacred Heart of Jesus school on the right where Jerica Rhodes was killed by her father fourteen years ago. Those would be the only memories that this world will remember. Now, mothers were killing sons, daughters were killing uncles, and grandfathers were killing wives. Blood relations and past quarrels just didn’t matter anymore. We were all the prey of the same hunters.

            My mind continued to race and I wasn’t sure how long it was that I drove before Toner came climbing over the seats again. He sat down on the one by the bus doors across from Brittany. He leaned down to grab the shotgun under the driver’s seat.

            “Whoa,” I said, swerving a bit as I kicked his hand away.

            He scowled a little before shaking his hand. “I know a lot more about guns that you think I do, mama,” he said. “My dad used to take me out hunting. I can fix the shotgun.”

            I hesitated, but eventually moved my foot so that Toner could reach for the weapon yet again. He stood the weapon up on the butt, twirling it in his hands as he looked it over. I hit a pothole in the road and the teenager lost his grip on the shotgun. It fell to the ground right near Brittany’s feet. She screamed, pulling her legs up to her chest. I glared at Toner.

            “Sorry, sorry,” he chuckled, nervously and went to reach for the shotgun once more. “I said I could fix it. I never said I would be careful.”

            I breathed in deeply and let it out in a slow and controlled manner. It was enough to make Toner grip the shotgun tighter as he looked it over. “It’s not broken,” he informed. “It’s just empty. Let me see the pistol.”

            Toner held out his right hand and looked up at me. I had seen him play on the field, I knew he was clumsy. I begrudgingly handed him the pistol. He looked that one over, as well, and detached the magazine to look inside.

            “All of these are different, but it looks like this one holds twenty rounds. There are only seven in here, though,” he explained to me.

            “Perfect. That’s not even enough bullets to take us all out,” huffed Andrew.

            “Why would you even consider that as a viable option?” I glared up at the rear view mirror.

            “I’d rather pick my poison,” the fifteen-year-old spat.

            “I thought Destiny was the suicidal one,” muttered Brandon.

            I could see a fury build in Andrew’s eyes and a sadness build in Destiny’s. “Hey!” I snarled. “This isn’t high school anymore. Congratulations, but you all just graduated. Welcome to adulthood, now knock it off!”

            I was seething, sitting in the driver’s seat with a sudden heat radiating off of me. I was tired and frustrated, angry and bitter, lost and scared. So much had fallen apart in just a matter of minutes that I didn’t think I could handle it all at just seventeen, the age where the only thing that should have been stressing me was high school exams and foolish crushes on boys. This was like being a teenage parent without a job, without a partner, without any help.

            “Who is going to take care of us?” my sister’s soft voice broke the thick silence.

            I sighed, slowing down the bus until it came to a complete stop. I stood and pivoted so that I was once again staring down at the group of people. I could see the desolation in their expressions. “I will,” I stated, my body mirroring one of strength and hope, a façade I managed to concoct on the spot. “I promise that I will let nothing bad happen to any of you. I promise to get you somewhere safe. I promise.”

            Brittany reached out to touch my hand. She looked up at me with a sad, small smile. She could see right through me. In a way, she knew me better than I knew myself. She didn’t need to feel how fast my heart was beating to know how scared I was, or feel how tight my lungs got as I struggled to breath. She just knew.

            “Audrey…I’m hungry,” Hannah informed, her voice soft and squeaky like a shy little mouse.

            I kept my lips closed as I rolled my tongue. I knew this moment would come. It had been a few hours since we had encountered the gas station where all we thought to grab was sodas and junk food, assuming that now we would be home with our families and welcomed with a full meal. I nodded my head. “Give me a bit. I’ll find a place.”

            I drove the bus onto 9W and headed north. I had no idea where I was going or what we would run into, but aimlessly driving seemed good at the time. With every road sign that we passed, the kids would argue and debate which place we should stop at for food. After a good twenty minutes of driving, I had had enough of their opinions.

            “We could go to Perkins,” Brittany said as we drove by a food sign for Newburgh. “They normally have food in their bakery area that would be easy to grab.”

            “More sugar is the last thing these kids need,” I responded.

            “I’m thinking about for you…” she said softly.

            I let my neck roll. We both knew that I would be the one to have to retrieve the food, as the others wouldn’t dare leave the bus even for some sustenance. Although the food choice may not have been the best, it would be a relatively quick trip for me and I didn’t feel like hearing the kids complain anymore. Once again, I made the executive decision. As the first born, I had the makings of a natural born leader, but this wasn’t the type of responsibility that I had ever dreamed of having.

            It wasn’t long before the white and green striped awning of Perkins came into sight. I brought the bus to a slow crawl as we entered into Newburgh. At first glance, there were a few infected meandering through abandoned cars and down the road. I had yet to discover what attracted them because as I drove the bus at a snail’s pace, none of them really seemed to take notice of the living individuals inside. We all seemed to hold our breath as I pulled into the Perkins driving lot. I parked the bus outside of the entryway and turned to face my best friend.

            “You know the drill. Five minutes,” I said.

            Brittany nodded her head and we switched places so that she could be in the driver’s seat ready to go when I got back…or if I didn’t. I slipped the pistol into the waistband of the sweats and squinted my eyes to see if I could detect any motion on the other side of the glass windows to the restaurant and bakery. After waving to Brittany, she opened the door and I jumped out. I quickly sped towards the front doors. A little bell rang as I opened it. I froze. In normal circumstances, the bell would be just a way to alert the employees of new customers entering the building, but I always hated hearing it. It was always like, ‘oh, I’m here! I’ve come to get fat! Everybody look at me!’ But now, it was more than just a way to alert people of my presence. It was almost a death sentence.

            I didn’t see anything charging towards me nor did I hear any clatter. I let the door close behind me as I entered into the restaurant. To the left, there was a small seating area with a few wooden square tables. To the right, along the wall full of windows were the booths. Just ahead, was the counter with all of the baked goods and the registers. This particular Perkins held a three window display. The section on the far left was smashed in, little glass shards mixed in with all of the pies and pastries.

            My grandmother had always loved Perkins. Whenever she would visit from Florida, it would be where she suggested we all go every time we were out. My mother and I used to tease her about it. She was my favorite person in the world. I had never had a relationship with anyone as strongly as the one with my grandmother. It didn’t matter how old she got, she was always dying her hair a light blonde. And for the first time in the seventeen years of my existence, I was walking into a Perkins without her.

            There was a strong stench that hit my nose as I walked up to the bakery section. Instead of the pleasant smell of freshly baked fruit pies, scrumptious cookies, and mammoth muffins, there was something stronger and less desirable mixed in. I looked to my right where all the booths were. There were a few still corpses hunched over in their seats. One man’s head was laying down in a cold plate of eggs. A few flies buzzed around them, but I wasn’t sure if they were there for the food or for the bodies.

            I delicately walked around the glass display until I got to the low wooden door. I pushed it open so that I could get behind the counter. I grabbed a to-go bag from under the register and began filling it with whatever still looked salvageable. I knew that their food was baked fresh, which meant that none of it could be over a week. Although their shelf life for freshness might have been less than that, it was all that I could do for now, despite dreading the hyper effect it might have on those waiting on the bus.

            I was reaching for a French Silk Pie when I saw a pair of legs on the other side of the glass. I paused, my hand still stretched out towards the creamy dessert. The legs were covered by a soiled pair of black slacks. There was a long rip in the knee that was open enough to reveal graying flesh on the other side. I backed up and slowly corrected my posture to see a dead man staring back at me. Two others soon joined them. As I looked to my left where the low wooden door was, I saw two more creatures approaching, one with splotches of eggs mixed in with his missing patches of flesh. The booths where they had been sitting where now empty. It made me think that perhaps, despite being in a restaurant and bakery, that I was the first taste of food that they had seen in a while.

            The five of them began hissing and vainly trying to get past the barriers that separated us. I slowly backed up and pulled the gun from the waistband of the sweats. To my right, the kitchen door swung open, and another dead man walked out. He was wearing a white apron and a tall chef’s hat. His Perkins nametag read: Marco. His whole face was hollow and elongated, like the demonic creatures normally found in horror films. He turned towards me, eyes wide and black. I shot him in the forehead and he went flying back into the glass display. I grabbed the to-go bag of food and jumped over him before running through the door to the kitchen.

            It was a narrow space with stainless steel appliances everywhere. As I neared the backdoor, I heard pounding and a multitude of growls. The door was shaking and I knew that it wasn’t safe to exit through. I spun around to see the other five creatures through the circular glass piece in the kitchen door. They were starting to climb over. I felt a sudden breeze and heard a bird chip up ahead. I looked over to the large range hood looming over the multiple burners of the ovens. To climb through the range hood and cross the roof seemed to be my only option. I had seen the Final Destination franchise; I knew that my foot could slip, a burner could turn on, I could get stuck, and that these infected beings would be the last of my concern as I burned to death. Yeah, because that was where my mind was at a moment such as this.

            Another crash of glass seemed to finalize the decision for me and I found myself climbing onto the wide oven. I reached up to try to smash in the grates of the range hood so that I could pull myself up, but the slats burned my hands. I grabbed a meat hammer from the pile of cooking utensils on the counter and began banging the edges of the grate until two sides came loose. My first attempt to pull myself up failed, as the sides of the range hood were covered in old smoke and grease. I almost gagged as I saw the black remains on my hands. I wrapped two white towels around my hands and slid the handle of the to-go bag down my arm. Just as the kitchen door was pushed open and the five creatures charged in, I was able to pull myself up into the range hood.

            I had never been strong. I never worked out, and any sports team that I tried to make in high school had ended horribly. My muscles were never developed, but like when a car is pressing down on a child and the mother finds strength to move it, there was a great fear that fueled the ability to lift my body by pressing my hands and feet against the sides of the range hood that was able to get me to the top. I only slid a few times, but it was the five dead faces looking up at me and the seven hands reaching up that kept me from letting myself fall.

            Once I got to the top, I pushed my feet against one side so that my back was against the other. I balled my fists up and began punching the top barrier until it popped off and I was greeted by the bright blue sky. I threw the bag of food up onto the roof and the pulled myself up. I unwrapped my hands and let the two towels fall back down the range hood. I felt so gross and sticky, covered in soot and grease. I grabbed the bag of food and ran across the roof. When I got to the edge, I realized that I was too high up for Brittany to actually see me.

            This was the perfect place to scan the area, and when I did, I realized that there were a lot more of those corpses walking around than I had first calculated there to be. I spun around to look across the white roof of the Perkins. The ground was grainy, almost like stucco or that weird plaster stuff. I spotted a few beer bottles. Some were broken, like they had been thrown up there in haste. I grabbed the three that were still intact and chucked one at the bus. It shattered across the roof, little brown shards bouncing off onto the road. I let the other fall just before the front bumper of the bus. And by the time the third one hit the roof of the bus, there were a few sets of eyes looking up at me through the window. I frantically waved my arms, trying to signal for them to drive around to the back of the building. The message must have been relayed, because the bus soon rumbled to life and Brittany was driving it around the corner.

            I ran along the edge of the roof, following them. The back of the building was where an iron ladder was attached to the side. The bottom was next to the door where a few dead beings where beating against the steel. Brittany sped the bus up, ramming into the group enough to knock a few of them out. Two of them were just shoved to the side and began beating against the yellow exterior of the battered bus. I climbed down the ladder just enough until I was able to jump onto the roof. I began to pound on the emergency exit.

            “Open up!” I cried. “Let me in!”

            The white square door was soon pushed up to reveal Toner. I handed him the to-go bag of food before dropping myself in. I let out a low huff as I collided with the unwelcoming material of the aisle. Toner reached up and pulled the door closed as Brittany took off, leaving the other two infected creatures screaming behind.

            “Wow, you look like s**t,” Toner noted. “And you smell.”

            “Shut up,” I huffed.

            It wasn’t long before the younger teenagers were digging in the bag and stuffing their faces with more sugar. I grabbed my suitcase and moved down to the steps as Brittany drove. I did look horrible and I wanted to change. Despite there being a glass door behind me, I knew that while the kids where occupied with food and while I was standing on the other side of the seats on the steps, I would get a few moments of privacy to change. Only Brittany could see me as she drove.

            “I only used one bullet,” I informed her as I zipped open my suitcase.

            “I know,” she said back. “We heard. How did you get onto the roof?”

            “The range hood. It really makes me question restaurant sanitation,” I said as I pulled the red tank top off my body. I balled the material up and used it as a rag to wipe down my arms, neck, and face.

            I saw the corners of my friend’s lip turn upwards as she smiled. I changed out of the gray sweats and threw the dirty clothes into the aisle. When I felt like it was the cleanest I could get, I pulled on a pair of white skinny jeans and a one-sleeve black top. I then twisted my curly hair up into a messy bun. When I stepped back into the aisle, all I saw were seven stuffed faces staring back at me.

            “Anything left for us?” I asked as I kicked my suitcase back under the seat.

            Brandon looked into the bag before sheepishly looking up. He slowly shook his head and my heart sank. I pursed my lips and nodded before falling back into the seat diagonal from where Brittany was, too exhausted to even be upset. “It’s okay,” she said. “We can stop again.”

            Of course we could. And I would have to repeat what just happened again. And again. And again. “At that rate, I’ll have no clothes left by the end of the week,” I breathed, somewhat dejected.

            Naptime followed lunch despite the quantity of sugar that they all had inhaled. Everyone seemed to curl up in their own little area and sleep as Brittany and I continued switching turns driving north. We could have gone anywhere. There was Hollywood to the west and Disneyworld to the south, but we were driving north, north to nowhere. I guess when things couldn’t get any worse, driving north mirrored our hope that it was only “up from here.”

            “We’re on a ride to nowhere. Come on inside. Takin’ that road to nowhere. We’ll take that ride,” Brandon began to sing. His version was not as pleasant and welcomed as the Talking Head’s version. “Maybe you wonder where you are. I don’t care. Here is where time is on our side. Take you there, take you there. We’re on a road to nowhere. We’re on a road to nowhere. We’re on a road to nowhere.”

            It had only just begun, but I really didn’t want to listen to more of his musical metaphors to how we were aimlessly driving around, so I stood up to try the radio once more. Any time we had tried it before, we had just gotten static or random broadcasts of people searching for loved ones. It was as though the news reporters had forgotten what they were hired for.

            A loud blare of static shot from the speakers as I turned on the radio. I winced, instantly turning the volume down. I pushed the button that made the radio seek from station to station. There was static on the first three, a woman screaming on the fourth, a few more stations of static, and then there was one sudden one. A man was speaking. He sounded old; his voice calm and slow as he delicately tried to get each word out. I stopped the channel on his transfixing voice and turned up the volume.

            “The Siegfried Manor Bed & Breakfast has enough rooms and supplies to accommodate any lost or wandering soul,” the old voice was saying. “We are located just outside of Queensbury, New York. There are many of us, many of us waiting. We have plenty of food, water, beds �"”

            “Oh my god, a bed!” Destiny cried out. Apparently the initial loud burst of static had been enough to wake everyone and they were now all intently listening in on the first sane radio broadcast that we had heard in days.

            I looked to Brittany and murmured, “Do you think we should try it?”

            “F**k yeah!” screamed Toner.

            I shot him a quick raised brow before looking back to Brittany. “It’s up to you, Audrey,” she said back. “Do you even know where Queensbury is?”

            “Not entirely,” I admitted. “But I’m sure if we just keep driving we will see signs. I know its up north about two hours. If we get on I-87 N, we should see signs for it.”

            “What if there’s another pile up?” she asked.

            I shrugged. “We’ll just have to hope there isn’t.”

            “And can we trust these people?”

            I thought a moment before answering. “We’re going to have to.”