96 Miles

by J. L. Esplin

  That pain starts up in my chest again. The one that makes it hard for me to get in a good breath.

  “Your dad and my dad are a lot alike,” I say, repeating the words Jess and I always say when we’re together. Just to keep us talking.

  “They could be brothers,” she says.

  “We could be cousins,” I say, slowing down, starting to brake.

  “We are cousins,” she teases, though I can hear in her voice that she’s as nervous as I am. “We decided that last summer, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I mumble, bringing the truck to a stop at an angle.

  Our headlights shine through the empty cab of Spike’s old piece of crap. Glint off the big dent in the driver’s-side door. There’s no movement around it. No bob of dim flashlight in the bed of the truck. No sign of life.

  Just a dead truck, alone in the middle of nowhere.

  23

  “THIS IS WHERE you left them?” Jess says, frowning at the abandoned truck.

  “Yes,” I say, my foot still on the brake, my hands still on the wheel.

  “They left the truck?” she says. “Why would they leave the truck?”

  I feel that pinch between my eyes.

  I should have been back by now. I should have been back before the sun even went down. It was supposed to take me only six hours to walk there, plus the drive back in Mr. Brighton’s truck. That’s it.

  “They must have thought I didn’t make it,” I say, barely above a whisper.

  Then I see a shadow! Movement along the edge of the truck bed. Will up on his knees, blocking our headlights with his forearm, his expression unsure.

  “Will!”

  I shift the gear into park, throw open the door, and stand up on the running board by the doorframe, my heart pounding as if I’d run all the way back.

  “Will!” I call out louder, reassuring him it’s me.

  His eyes grow big and he turns, disappearing from view.

  “It’s John!” I hear him say as my feet hit the highway.

  I race to the back of the old silver truck, calling out my brother’s name. Haul myself up on the back bumper, headlights blinding me. “Stew!” I call again.

  “I knew it,” his quiet voice answers from the bed of the truck. “I knew he could do it.”

  “We all knew he could do it,” Cleverly says, up on her heels now, blocking those headlights.

  “One hundred percent,” Will agrees.

  I breathe out something between a gasp and a laugh, climb over the tailgate. I collapse against the side of it, sitting at my brother’s feet with my knees up.

  I know I should assure them right away that Jess is here, that we’ve got everything we need. But I hear her coming anyway. So instead, I drop my face to my knees, squeeze my eyes shut. So glad to be back with them in this stupid truck.

  * * *

  The first thing Jess does is give Stew water—not cold water but room-temperature water.

  Stew slides his knees up, and I move in closer, filling the space he’s made. He’s got one arm tucked beneath his head, his eyes shut tightly, guzzling water while Jess pricks one of his fingers and tests his blood.

  “Slow down with that water,” she tells him, and he listens to her.

  I try to catch her expression as she reads the meter, but she gives nothing away. Just gets an insulin pen ready, screwing on the needle while Will holds the light. She swipes an alcohol wipe on the side of his stomach. “Ready?” she says, and waits for his nod. Jess pinches the skin, piercing it with the needle.

  Stew doesn’t even flinch.

  Will watches it all with his eyes wide.

  I am telling you, my brother and Jess are impressive with this stuff.

  “How fast will it work?” Will says.

  Jess shakes her head. “It’s not something you can rush, or try to fix quickly.”

  Stew finishes one water bottle, and Jess puts another bottle in his hand. “Keep drinking. You’ve got ketones to flush out,” she says.

  “What are ketones?” Will asks.

  “Something your body produces when you start burning fat for energy.”

  He’s still confused, so Jess starts to explain in her usual patient way, “His body is burning fat, which sounds like a good thing.…”

  I only half listen to Jess and Will, too aware of my brother’s swaying knee. I drop my hand there. I know he’s really uncomfortable, I recognize the small movements he tends to make when he feels sick. It’ll be a while before he doesn’t feel that way anymore.

  I clear the lump in my throat and ask him, “Why were you waiting in the dark? When we got here, it looked like you’d abandoned the truck.”

  He pulls the water bottle away from his mouth. “Not in the dark,” he says, taking a breath. “We’ve got all those stars.”

  I raise my eyebrows, look up at the sky. “Oh,” I say softly. “You’re right.”

  I hear Cleverly come back around the bumper with that crate of stuff from Nate’s truck, and I squeeze Stew’s knee, jump up to help her lift it over the tailgate.

  “How you feeling, Stew?” she asks anxiously, pulling herself up and over.

  “Better,” he says, which I know is not true yet, but Cleverly’s shoulders drop a little, like she’s breathing a sigh of relief.

  “He’s just gotta flush out ketones,” Will says, passing me the flashlight and quickly kneeling by the crate.

  “Flush out what?” Cleverly says.

  “Ketones,” Will says. He grabs two waters—one for him and one for Stew. “Wait,” he says to Jess. “How exactly does he flush them out?”

  “Well…,” Jess says with a smile.

  I sit back at my brother’s feet, hand on his knee again, while Cleverly grabs a water bottle and shifts through the other stuff Jess and I put in the crate. Her hand suddenly goes still, her mouth opening in surprise, but I don’t say anything.

  I make room for her to sit next to me in the corner of the truck bed, and she stares at me with this funny look on her face.

  “What?” I say.

  “You know what,” she says, cracking open that ice-cold Coke. I watch her take a nice long drink, a stupid grin on my face.

  A while later, Stewart has to pee. This time, it’s a good thing—he’s gotta flush out those ketones—and I put down the tailgate and help him out of the truck, help him get back in when he’s done.

  “… but we’re from Las Vegas,” Cleverly is saying to Jess when we get back.

  “I live in Las Vegas too!” Jess says. “With my mom during the school year.”

  “John didn’t tell me you live in Las Vegas! What school do you go to?”

  “Hey, Jess,” I interrupt, realizing I never even introduced them to each other. “This is Cleverly and Will. Cleverly and Will, this is Jess.”

  “Really, John?” Cleverly says.

  “We figured it out, but thanks,” Jess says.

  Will says to Jess, “Oh! You should also know that we’re two of the four founding members of the Battle Born, with John and Stew.”

  “The Battle Born?”

  “Yeah. See, we all drank toilet water, and that’s how we got in the club—”

  “You drank what?”

  I give Will a look and start to explain, “We boiled it first, Jess,” but realize that doesn’t actually sound much better.

  Cleverly sighs. “You guys are making our club sound really lame.”

  Then Stew suddenly starts laughing. And his smile is more of a grimace, his voice a little strained, but he says, “John found toilet water in that old abandoned mobile home.” He tucks his knees up to his stomach, laughing so hard. “And Cleverly and Will, they walked in right when we were scooping it into our canteens.”

  Jess’s mouth is wide open in shock, and maybe we’re all a little delirious with exhaustion, but the rest of us start laughing too. So hard, my stomach muscles actually start to ache.

  “Okay,” Jess says, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, �
�so what do I have to do to get in this club? Drink toilet water?”

  “Would you do it?” Cleverly asks, her chin up like it’s a challenge, but she’s still sort of laughing.

  Jess thinks for a second. “Yes. If I had to, I’d do it.”

  “Then good news!” Will says. “Urine the club!”

  We all agree. Because drinking toilet water or not, Jess is pretty Battle Born.

  Then I remember something that I should have told them right away. I can’t even believe I forgot it! “Stew, I have some bad news for you,” I say, pushing myself up straighter. “About your whole zombie-apocalypse theory.”

  His forehead creases. “What do you mean?”

  I look at Jess and her smile perks up, like she just remembered too. “Well, a few hours ago at the Brightons’, the floodlights in the tortoise enclosure came on.”

  I don’t mention it happened while I was wrestling Nate for control over that flashlight.

  Stew, Cleverly, and Will don’t exactly give me the reaction I was expecting. They just sort of look at me, confused, so I say, exasperated, “The power came back on!”

  “What?”

  “John!” Cleverly says, shoving my shoulder. “The power came back on, and you’re just now telling us?”

  Then they lose it, like we’ve won the freaking lottery or something. Will dives at me, puts his arms around my stomach in a tight hug. The second he lets go, Cleverly’s got her arms around my neck.

  It all feels pretty amazing.

  Stew starts to prop himself up, but Jess pushes him back down. “It only came on for a few seconds,” she says, laughing, “but it means something is happening.”

  “It means there’s an end to this stupid blackout,” I say.

  Stew says, like he’s serious, “It means the zombies are losing.”

  I roll my eyes. “Okay, the zombies are losing. Can we get out of this stupid truck now?”

  “Yeah!” Stew says.

  “Hang on a second,” Jess says, pushing him back down once more. “We should test your blood again.”

  “I can do it myself this time,” Stew says, and he sounds so much like himself, like the old Stew, that a grin tugs at the corner of my mouth.

  I know he’ll be all right.

  Jess holds the flashlight for him while he tests his blood, reads the meter. And I’m suddenly more anxious than ever to pack up so we can get out of here. “Where’s our stuff?” I ask.

  “We dumped everything out on the side of the road to make space back here,” Will admits.

  I start to get up. “I’ll move it to the other truck—”

  Both Jess and Cleverly stop me.

  “John, we got it,” Cleverly says.

  “Take a break. Wait here with Stew.”

  Cleverly jumps out of the truck, and Jess passes her the crate.

  “Yeah, we got this!” Will says, hopping out after them.

  To be honest, I’m still pretty pumped with adrenaline. But I’m also not ready to leave my brother’s side.

  I hesitate, then turn on my backside and lie down beside him, my legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, my arm behind my neck.

  We can hear them walking around the truck, kicking up gravel, their muffled voices, laughter, but it’s all pretty hushed within our metal cocoon. I can also feel every ridge of the truck bed beneath us through the sleeping bags. “This is really uncomfortable,” I say, and he sort of laughs.

  Then Stew asks, “What do you think Dad is doing right now?”

  I don’t have to give it much thought; I know what he’s doing.

  “Trying to figure out how to get back to us,” I say. Then I look at Stew. “I know one reason why he hasn’t come back.” I tell him what we heard on that shortwave radio at the reservoir, about the state borders being closed.

  I’m not sure how Stew feels about this, because he’s quiet for a while. Then he says, “I just want to talk to him. Even if he’s stuck somewhere and can’t get home. I just want to hear his voice.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I say.

  I look back up at all those stars, thinking of all the nights we’ve been on our own, without our dad. All the nights we’ve only had each other.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell my brother in a whisper, saying what I should have said before I left him. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you more. I should have listened to you more.”

  Stew shakes his head. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he says, his voice sure. “I’ve just been lying here, thinking about how lucky I am…”

  His words fall away at the end but I know he’s talking about me. Lucky he has me. And I’m kind of surprised to hear him say that, and I want to tell him if anyone is lucky around here, it’s me. But I’m finding it hard to speak right now.

  * * *

  Stew’s lying down in the backseat of Nate’s extended-cab truck. Jess, Cleverly, and Will are all squished beside me in the front. I turn the key in the ignition, the engine starts up, and I’ve got my hand on the gearshift when I notice what Will’s got in his hand. It’s that stupid Extraterrestrial Highway ad from Spike’s glove box. The one with directions to our place written on the back. Bent up around the edges now.

  “John, what are we waiting for?” Cleverly says.

  “Just thinking,” I say.

  I stare out at the piece-of-crap truck for a minute, and my heart starts to pound. But in a good way.

  I turn to Will. “Why do you have that?”

  He looks down at the glossy ad and shrugs. “It’s my fan,” he says, showing me, waving it in front of his face a few times.

  “Can I have it?”

  He hesitates, but shrugs again and hands it to me. “I guess.”

  “Thanks! I’ll be right back,” I say to all of them. I jump out, run to the cab of that old silver truck.

  We know something about this blackout that Spike probably doesn’t. We know it’s going to end. Maybe even soon. Life will slowly move back toward normal. Borders will open up, gas won’t be so scarce, cars and trucks will travel down this highway. And eventually, Spike will get his piece-of-crap truck back.

  When he does, I want to make sure he knows something.

  I get in the cab, lit by the headlights of Nate’s truck. I take the Sharpie from my pocket, turn over the Extraterrestrial Highway ad, and write the message in big letters, just to the side of that HWY 318, MM 98 scrawled in the upper right corner. Then I sort through the papers in his glove box, throwing them aside until I find the one with the information I want. I fold it a few times and stuff it in my pocket. I crank both windows up so wind won’t blow through the cab. Then I slide the ad onto the dashboard, wedge it right beneath the glass so it won’t move, my message faceup.

  I slam the door of that truck for the last time.

  Back behind the wheel of Nate’s truck, I look over at them, a little breathless. I’ve got a big grin on my face, I know.

  “Well?” Stew asks from the backseat.

  “What did you write?” Will asks.

  “I kept it short and sweet,” I say, putting the gear in drive.

  Hey Moron,

  Got your address.

  Sincerely,

  The Battle Born

  THE END

  EPILOGUE

  “John, it’s Dad again. I keep leaving these messages, I don’t know if you’re even getting them. Promise this time not to get choked up. Just wanted to say I made it through the state line. I’m back in Nevada. First thing that went through my mind was that song they teach you in school. ‘Home means Nevada, / Home means the hills, / Home means the sage and the pines.’

  “Never been so happy in my life to see all that sage.

  “Anyway, I’m calling from Mesquite, almost to Las Vegas, and from there I’ve got a ride lined up to take me all the way home up the 318. Chris Brighton, if you can believe the luck. He’s been waiting for me to get through. Told him you’ve been on your own all this time, and he reminded me that you’ve g
otta be okay because you’re together. Stew’s okay because he has you, and you’re okay because you’ve got him. I know he’s right about that.

  “Stew, if you’re listening, I love and miss both you boys more than I can say.

  “All right, they’re telling me we’ve gotta get going—

  “Oh, John! One more thing. I was thinking about the morning I left town when we crossed the state line. Your bedroom lit up the color of our state flag. And it just made me smile, remembering the looks on our faces.

  “Hope by now you got that Battle Born flag up on your wall, where it belongs.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The places I mention in this book are real—Lund, Ely, Alamo, the reservoir, and, of course, Nevada State Route 318. (And yes, Las Vegas is real too!) Because these are real places, I should note that I did take some creative liberties. How I depicted Lund, and the community of people in and around Lund, came from both my imagination and from what I thought would make the most interesting story. Much of the layout and description of the reservoir came from my memory and imagination, and may not be exact. Distances between places also may not be exact.

  There are a lot of long lonely highways in Nevada to choose from. I chose highway 318 for a reason. I’ve driven this highway for years, passing through Lund, as it’s the route I take when traveling from my home in Las Vegas to visit my family in Idaho—a shortcut that saves me forty-five minutes. You can sometimes go miles on highway 318 without even seeing another car in the distance, and it really feels like you’re alone out there, surrounded by nothing but desert and big blue sky.

  That is the feeling I hoped to capture when I chose this highway for the setting of John’s story.

  All that said, it takes a long time to write a book, and an even longer time to get that book through the publishing process and into the hands of readers. Sometimes, while all that time is passing, public rest areas with bathroom facilities are constructed right in the middle of long desolate highways.

  But just to be clear, when John, Stew, Cleverly, and Will set out to walk down the 318 without nearly enough water, there were no toilets up and down the highway to drink from. Though John would probably love that.