by Ely Page
“That is an interstate,” Frank stated. “We will set up camp in that cave tonight where we can get shelter from any possible bad weather that may come. We will follow the interstate in the morning.”
Andrea ran up to Frank. “Will it take us to where we’re going? Are we finally at the end?” She was so excited that she ran out of breath.
“Calm down, Andrea.” Frank smiled at her. “Dylan, grab a couple of hunters and cross the interstate. On the other side there are deer.”
Dylan was thrilled; it was the first hunt he would lead.
“Tonight, we feast,” Frank said in an uplifting tone.
Many in the group cheered, but Frank had mixed emotions about what was to come.
Chapter 2
Out on the hunt, there seemed to be little activity. Dylan had everybody who could climb go up into a tree. He smashed some berries against those trees to mask their human scent. He then sent Ben and Andy out further in the trees and told them to push back toward the interstate, where Dylan would set up and hope that some deer would run his way. It worked; Leah shot a deer with her bow, and Dylan got one with his rifle. Wildlife was scarce, so the fact that they got two deer was outstanding. The tribe had some good eating that night, and plenty of full bellies to show for it. Before everyone turned in for the night, Frank had an update to share.
“I now know where we are going,” Frank said. He dipped his head a little lower. “It has been revealed to me that there is a small town in Oklahoma where we are to meet other survivors.”
The tribe erupted with all kinds of reactions upon hearing Frank say that there were other people still alive. Ollie, who had been close with Frank, seemed the most upset. “How long have you known that we weren’t the only ones?” he shouted.
“Calm down, everybody, and please let me finish,” Frank said. “Every day I am learning something new. Only what I need to know is revealed to me, and as I told you before, as soon as I find something out, I will tell all of you. I have always said that there are others. I keep nothing from you, and I am in this just as much as you all are.”
With everyone calmed down and listening to him again without interruption, Frank had more to say. “In the morning, we will begin to follow this interstate out here,” Frank waved toward the clearing. “Interstate 40. It is the most direct path to where we are going.” Frank looked at Alice and nodded his head. She got up and went to the food cache. “We are nearing the Mississippi River, and our journey is halfway through,” he continued. Alice came back with a couple of wine bottles. “Tonight, we celebrate. I hope you left room in your bellies for this,” Frank said as he helped open one of the bottles. He passed the bottle around, not taking a drink for himself. “Tomorrow we find our future,” he said.
The group shouted in joy and elation. Frank knew that tomorrow and for years to come there would be very little to celebrate.
Once the party had died down, everyone went to rest—everyone but Frank. He stayed up to watch the fire.
“Hey, mind if I stay up too?” Dylan came into the light of the fire.
“Sure, have a seat.” Frank waved to a spot on the ground next to him.
“Tell more about where we are going?” Dylan asked, folding his knees up toward his chin and resting his hands on them. He seemed eager to learn everything that Frank knew.
“Oh, I suppose that I can tell you some of what I learned,” Frank said. “I do not know the name of the town, but I have learned that it is a place that has had a very troubled past. Bad things happened there.” Dylan didn’t understand why Frank would willingly take all of them to a place like that, and Frank caught on to it. “Don’t worry, the evil there has been cleaned away and God has placed a protector there, someone who makes sure evil can never return.” Frank put a hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “Now go and get some rest; you need all you can get.”
Dylan walked to his sleeping mat and instantly fell asleep, but Frank stayed up a little longer before he lay down by Alice on the hard cave floor.
When Dylan woke up, he could sense something dark on the horizon. He’d had a vision while sleeping: there was a blood-red sky over a blood-red Earth, and Frank was wandering the desert by himself, barely able to walk.
Dylan walked to the food cache for his routine breakfast of coffee and oatmeal; for being the second to last one to go to sleep, he was one of the first ones up.
“Good morning,” Frank said, walking up behind him.
“Morning,” Dylan replied awkwardly. “I had a dream, a vision last night.”
“Oh?” Frank said with interest in the tone of his voice. “What did you see?”
Dylan looked around, making sure no one could hear them. “I saw a red sky and a red Earth, and a man walking in the desert by himself, dying alone.” Dylan left out that it was Frank in the vision.
“There will be some trouble ahead for us. It won’t be easy,” Frank said. The vision confirmed what Frank had already felt—that Dylan was to be a very important part of humanity’s future and that Frank needed to help him every step of the way. Frank waved his arm over to a notch in the side wall of the cave where they could sit away from the others. He continued: “The road to the new city will not be clear for us.”
“What do you mean? I thought you said we just follow the interstate.” Dylan didn’t understand.
“We will run into others: those who did survive but are far from what they once were. I don’t know if you could even call them human.”
Dylan furrowed his brow. “You told us we would not see anyone else until we got to the new city,” he said. There was a bit of shock in his voice, but he managed to keep his tone down.
“I said that we would not find another person until we got to the new city,” Frank said.
“Frank, Frank!” Someone shouted from the outside the cave to their left. Dylan turned and saw it was Ben running toward them.
When Ben got to them, Frank put both his hands on Ben’s shoulders. “What’s got you so excited, Ben?”
Ben waited a second before replying so he could catch his breath. “I found a bus on the interstate. It is easily big enough for all of us to ride all the way to the new city.”
Frank smiled. “Good work, Ben. Did you check ahead to see if there was a clear path?”
Ben’s expression turned to a frown. “No, I guess I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry.”
“That’s OK, Ben,” Frank reassured him. “How about if it started?”
Ben’s smile returned. “I got it to turn over,” he said, but then his smile faded and his face turned dark. “But there is a problem.”
“What is the problem?” Dylan asked, growing anxious.
“There are some bodies on board,” Ben spoke softly, almost inaudibly.
“Well, we should pack up camp and walk over there and check it out as a group,” Frank said.
Frank and Dylan moved to tell the tribe and help everyone take down the camp while Ben stayed still, recounting what he had seen.
As the tribe walked toward the interstate and the bus, Dylan felt mixed emotions about the situation. He was glad they might not have to walk anymore (his feet were killing him), but at the same time, he didn’t want to see another dead body either. Dylan looked at everyone else in the tribe and he could sense they all felt the same way. As he looked at everyone, he noticed that Frank and Alice were holding hands. It was the first time that he had seen that, and it made him feel a little better. It made him think that no matter what, there would always be love.
“There it is, that’s the bus,” Ben said excitedly as he pointed to a big black tour bus. The bus came into view, but no one moved any faster toward it.
After a long walk for a short distance, the tribe had reached the bus. It was a big charter bus with tinted windows and all the luxury items. Frank stopped at the door and turned around to face the group as they g
athered around him. He spoke loud enough so they all could hear. “Let us pray. We shall pray for those who perished on board this bus and ask the Lord to guide us on the proper removal of their bodies so we may use their vessel or leave them were they lay and move on.” Everyone bowed their heads and prayed.
After the prayer, the tribe openly discussed what they felt, and everyone agreed that it was OK to remove the bodies as long as they were given a proper burial.
“Andy, could you please go on board and get a count so we know how many graves to dig?” Frank asked as he grabbed a foldable shovel out of a backpack.
“Yes, Frank, I will get right on it,” Andy said as he climbed up the first step of the bus.
Everyone else grabbed whatever tools they could use and started digging on the side of the interstate.
Andy was the only one to speak during that time, and all he said was, “There are nineteen bodies on board.”
While most kept digging, Dylan, Andy, Frank, and Ben started taking bodies off of the bus. They laid them in the shallow, makeshift graves. Alice, Leah, and Stephanie cleaned the inside of the bus to try to get rid of the smell of death.
Once the bodies were buried and the girls were done cleaning what they could, Frank blessed the bus and told everyone to get on and pick a good seat. Frank grabbed Dylan by the arm when he tried to squeeze into the middle of the pack.
“Could you drive the bus, Dylan?” Frank asked in a low tone.
Dylan was a little nervous about that request. He didn’t want to tell Frank no, but at the same time, he had never driven something like this, and the abandoned cars all over the road would make driving difficult. He’d be driving with white knuckles the entire time, and he didn’t want that. “I am truly honored that you would give me such a big responsibility, but I do believe that Greg or Porter would do a much better job than me. They both used to be truck drivers. Plus, I never got my driver’s license.”
To Dylan’s surprise, Frank gave a lighthearted laugh. “You are right, Dylan. I have already talked to them, and they both agreed to take turns driving in shifts. I just wanted to see what you would say to it. Proceed, young man.”
Dylan didn’t understand what that was all about. He brushed it off and soon forgot about it.
Fog rolled in just as the tribe finished loading the bus. Porter was going to take the first shift as the driver and had sat down to familiarize himself with the control panel.
Once everybody was sitting down and ready, Porter turned in his seat to look back at everyone. “Here goes nothing,” he said in an unsure voice.
The bus didn’t want to start; the engine was turning rough. Ben started sweating a little because he said that he had started it, but on the third try, Porter got it to turn over. Everybody on board cheered when he put the bus in gear and they started rolling, although at a very slow pace.
After only a few minutes of driving, Leah rose from her seat toward the front and walked back a couple of rows to where Dylan was sitting. She stopped at his side and asked him, “Do you mind if I sit here?”
Nervously, Dylan replied, “Yeah, sure.” He stiffened in his own seat and moved as far from the aisle as he could to give her plenty of space. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her and he was just being nice. Rather, it was just opposite—he was horrible with women always had been.
Leah sat down next to him. Her hip rubbed Dylan’s, making him blush. She was a very pretty young woman, with long auburn hair and golden-brown eyes. Dylan got butterflies in his stomach every time they got close.
“So, what’s going on?” Dylan cringed and immediately regretted asking such a dumb question.
“Well, let’s see, I saw the world end, all my friends and family die, and I just got done cleaning death off the seat I am sitting on. What’s going on with you?” Leah sounded very annoyed.
“I’m sorry for asking a stupid question like that. I never say the right thing,” Dylan said sheepishly.
“I should apologize to you,” Leah stated, feeling bad for the way she came off. “I just feel a little nerve-racked right now. I didn’t mean to snap like that.”
There were a few moments of silence, but it didn’t feel awkward.
“I am named after a character on the show Beverly Hills 90210,” Dylan confessed.
“What?” Leah asked, surprised by the statement. “Where did that come from?”
Dylan was still not looking Leah in the eye. “People always ask me if I’m named after someone in my family, and I always say, ‘Nope, my mom named me after her favorite TV character.’” Dylan hoped this topic would be a better icebreaker.
“I am named after my great-aunt,” Leah responded with a smile. The icebreaker seemed to have worked.
Leah and Dylan continued to talk as the bus weaved in and out of all the abandoned cars on the roadway. Porter had said at one point his top speed was twenty miles per hour due to the increasing fog and deteriorated road conditions. Jenny, a woman of Porter’s age, sat up front in the doorway to help him navigate.
Three hours into the drive, the tribe put it to a vote and decided to stop, stretch their legs, and have some lunch. When they all got their bowl of rice, Dylan went over to eat with Frank and Alice.
“We saw that Leah was sitting with you,” Alice stated with warmth in her voice.
“Yeah, she was,” he replied bashfully, blushing just talking about Leah.
“She is such a nice girl. Poor thing has been through so much,” Alice added.
“We all have,” Frank interjected, touching Alice’s arm and giving her a shallow nod not to continue. Dylan was oblivious to it.
Once everyone had eaten and stretched their legs, they all climbed back on the bus. This time Leah sat next to Becca, a girl who was maybe a year or two older than Dylan and Leah. Porter had said that they had gone only fifty-one miles in the three hours of driving. Not great time, but it was still faster than walking.
The fog slowly lifted until the sun showed some of its yellow color through the thick clouds. Someone on the bus commented that the sun would break free of the clouds any day now. Dylan heard the comment but didn’t look out the window like everyone else did. He was daydreaming about Leah.
He imagined they were on a beach. Leah handed Dylan a bottle of suntan lotion and asked him to rub it on her back. They had no worries; it was a beautiful day, and they were the only people in sight. After rubbing her back, Dylan laid down next to Leah on his beach towel and fell asleep. He awoke only minutes later and saw Leah walking off in the distance with a man in black from head to toe. Leah was holding the man’s hand and resting her head on his shoulder. Dylan tried screaming, but no sound left his mouth. All he heard was the sound of the ocean, but it didn’t sound like waves crashing. Dylan looked at the ocean to see it had turned to blood and was full of bodies riding the tide. One body got so close to Dylan that he thought it might reach out to grab his ankle; he quickly jumped out of the way. When he looked up to find Leah again. All he saw was a giant blank face right in front of him. Then a laugh rose slowly over the sound of the ocean; it was the evilest, creepiest laugh Dylan ever heard.
Dylan startled awake and shot up on his feet. He spotted Leah right away; she was two rows ahead of him, sitting with Becca. He sat back down, looking to see if anyone saw him jump. Nobody seemed to have noticed, so he sat back down and gathered himself. It was just a dream, but it had felt so real. He sniffed his hands they smelled like suntan lotion, which made him feel even more uneasy than he already was.
After a full day of driving, Porter’s shift ended and Greg took over. It was dark now, and only an hour into it, Greg had to stop. They were getting close to Memphis now, and there were cars all over the road, making it impossible to navigate, especially with only one headlight.
Frank, Greg, Porter, and Jenny went outside and stood in front of the bus to talk about what to do next. The group
broke up as Frank climbed back into the bus.
“Everyone, we have decided that it is best to stay here for the rest of the night. We are amongst too many cars to drive through in the dark. We don’t want to risk the drive; it is not worth the headache,” he said.
Everybody on the bus started to prepare for sleep. The bus was so big that everyone could easily have their own space. After some bathroom breaks, the tribe settled into their makeshift beds for the night. Frank had selected Ben to stay up and take the first watch; Frank himself would relieve him in a few hours.
Ben’s watch was uneventful. The only thing he passed on to Frank was a gust of wind that had come up from the south, held steady for a couple of minutes, and then stopped suddenly.
From his spot in the driver’s seat, Frank didn’t see much of anything, and all he heard were some of his fellow tribe members snoring. He noticed some rodents scurrying around the cars in front of him, but that was the extent of what he saw.
As the sky went from black to dark gray, Frank started watching the eastbound lanes just to his left. Something out there made him uneasy. He didn’t see anything, but he sensed evil lurking nearby.
Frank focused on a spot in between an SUV and a semi-truck. A shadow appeared, and though Frank couldn’t make out what it was, it was clearly the source of his unease. He stared at it for a long time, never blinking. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, the shadow faded away as the sky grew ever brighter.
Whatever the shadow was, Frank knew he would see it again. He also knew that next time, it would end a lot differently.
The day was cold and the sky remained gray. Several members of the tribe went out from the bus to syphon gas from nearby cars. The bigger guys went ahead of the bus to move as many cars as they could out of the way, clearing a path for the bus to drive through.
Frank set a goal to hit Little Rock, Arkansas, by nightfall. It was a tall task, but as Frank said, “If you don’t make goals, then you have nothing to reach for.” Greg and the navigator, Jenny, started to chart their course using an old road atlas.