She readjusted her bag on her shoulder and returned to the charging car. Easing into the driver’s seat, she inserted the key into the ignition. Closing her eyes and muttering a silent wish, she turned it. The car started. Lights dazzled across the dashboard. The battery meter was full. An old physical screen, similar to what she’d seen in the university building, winked on. It displayed a map, just like the colorful one she’d seen in the atlas, with a small car icon marking her position. The engine was so silent she couldn’t hear it. She almost expected nothing to happen when she pressed he accelerator. She placed the transmission in D. As the car inched forward, she tested the brake. After pulling on the emergency brake and shifting the transmission back to P, she jumped out of the car, closing the great metal doors behind her.
Sliding back into the car, she looked at the road ahead, surveying the stalled cars and stone ruins that had spilled into the street. She’d have to move slowly, but not nearly as much as she’d been on foot. She wouldn’t be as exhausted now either.
Turning onto the city’s main street, she put her foot to the accelerator, weaving between piles of old bricks and rusted cars. She kept her eyes on the road, and turned on the windshield wipers to clear away the rain. This was it. For the first time since she’d left New Atlantic, she felt hope rise within her.
She sped up, heading into the unknown.
Chapter 15
Ahead of H124 stretched a sea of asphalt and ruined skyscrapers. The sky lay streaked with striped clouds, gleaming silver as they drifted across the deep blue.
She’d been driving for two days now. Her progress was slow, but not as bad as it had been on foot. She’d been using the car’s screen to navigate toward the next shelter along her route, but many of the roads were impassable. As she wove between rusting cars and fallen buildings, she wondered if this human society had left any room at all for anything other than concrete. She encountered no open spaces, just building after building after building.
It had stormed solidly the first two days. Once, she had to take shelter under a bridge when another hailstorm threatened to damage the solar panel on top of the car.
The third day was proving to be blisteringly hot. The storm clouds had cleared in the morning, and the sun had been beating down relentlessly since then. She drove slowly through several decrepit towns, with broken asphalt linking them all, a sprawl of ancient cities that went on and on. Unlike the giant towers in New Atlantic, the tallest edifices in these places were only twelve or fourteen stories high. Most were long and squat, streaming by in an endless procession of ancient urban sprawl.
At first she’d rolled the windows down, trying to get a breeze, but found it suffocating. The thermometer in her car read 115 degrees F. At last she’d discovered a button called AC and turned that on, finding a welcome cold breeze blasting out of the vents in the dashboard. AC was the same as the climate control in her building. She rolled up the windows, continuing on, grateful for a break from the heat. But it meant that she went through the batteries faster and had to stop more often to recharge them.
Though she had to slow down numerous times to maneuver around abandoned cars and vast potholes that sometimes had left no street at all behind, she was making decent time, and her spirits were higher than she could ever remember. The sky stretched blue, with towering clouds starting to pillar in the west. Despite her dire quest, she found herself smiling at times.
As the storm clouds blew in, she discovered a raised road with crumbling ramps leading up to it. She drove alongside it for a bit until she found a ramp that remained intact. The screen in her car showed that this raised road was a very direct route to the next weather shelter. She decided to take it, climbing the ramp and stopping at the top.
Not as many cars lay scattered on this new road, which stretched straight into the horizon. The car’s screen called it Interstate 80W. She paused, gazing down the road, letting the car idle for a few minutes. Along both sides of the interstate, rusted poles held up small platforms with metal frames. Some still held large rectangular shapes inside, and from some of these leaked ancient wiring and old lighting. She started to drive, wondering what they’d been for. This new road was incredible compared to the weathered way she’d come, and her time improved even more. Before she’d found this interstate, she’d encountered roads that had proven impassable. Others crossed rivers, but collapsed bridges had made it impossible to get over in the car, so she’d had to backtrack and sidetrack and find new ways past these obstacles. Now that she’d found this interstate, maybe she wouldn’t have to skirt around anything. She wondered if she could stay on it until she reached her destination.
As she drove on, she spotted a broken and faded rectangle, still partially held up inside its metal frame. She could only make out a few words, and a smiling face, worn blank in numerous places, gazed out at her. It read Upgrade from 16G! and at the bottom something about “unlimited” and “fees.”
She drove until she could no longer keep her eyes open, then decided to nap in the car for a while.
As it grew dark, she pulled over and curled up in the back seat. It rained at night, thrumming on the roof of the car. She found it reassuring and drifted off.
She awoke to strong winds buffeting the car in the darkness. The vehicle rocked back and forth, the gale howling through the vents in
