“So, you need a storm cellar?” Jo Ann asked, ratcheting the other strap down.
“I like my concrete house with metal shutters,” Wendy huffed. “I sleep like a baby, no matter how bad a storm gets.”
The twins turned to Wendy, “We love your house,” they said in unison.
“Wait till you see it,” Wendy said, finally getting her breathing under control.
Looking at her watch, “You sure you want to leave this early? It’s not even three,” Jo Ann said slowly, cutting her eyes up at the clouds.
“Guys, we can’t cut the lights on tonight unless it rains hard,” Wendy said, pushing off the trailer. “I’ll probably have to use the night vision scope and will still have trouble staying at forty-five.”
Walking around the trailer, Sally reached out to hold Wendy’s hand. “But if it storms, we will turn on the lights and go really fast, right?” Sally asked.
Nodding hard, “Oh, yeah,” Wendy sang out.
Loading up the boys and putting them in the backseat, Wendy was tempted to pull off the damn wetsuit and drive in the t-shirt that fit her. The only thing that had fit had been one pair of the boots and it’d been the six and half, not the worn-in sevens. The twins were in the same boat, only wearing the tennis shoes they had grabbed and t-shirts. At least their wetsuits didn’t have arms like Wendy’s did.
Taking the AR off, Wendy laid it on the dash and climbed in to see Jo Ann sitting up front. “We ready?” Wendy asked, looking around.
“Since we are leaving now, can we drive until morning?” Jo Ann asked with a pleading face.
“We are going to go as far as I can drive,” Wendy said, cranking the Tahoe. What really pissed her off was that she knew how long it took to get from her house to Miami before the Rudolph flu. Her family had rented a beach house for the week and Arthur had driven her and Joseph down. He’d made it in eighteen hours and change. The only stops were pee breaks and to refuel.
A fight had almost broken out in Mississippi when Arthur had told Wendy that she had to hold her pee until he stopped for gas again. When Wendy had rolled down the passenger window and pulled down her pants to hang her ass out the window to piss, Arthur had sped off the interstate and stopped at the first store he’d seen.
“If both of you can stay up with me, I should be able to do it,” Wendy offered, backing out.
Opening the center console, Jo Ann pulled out the small energy drink. “I know you had coffee, but I think these work better,” Jo Ann told her.
“They make my head itch,” Sally said, reaching from the backseat and taking the one in Jo Ann’s hand.
“Only one every six hours,” Wendy told them as she pulled around the house guiding the Tahoe back onto the road. They both nodded, turning up the small bottles.
Taking the top off one, Wendy turned it up. “I like coffee better,” Wendy gagged out.
“I have the pot on my floorboard,” Jo Ann said, tossing the bottles out. “I feel bad about littering.”
“Baby, I’ve never littered either, but we aren’t in normal times and I don’t want Ryan or Noah getting ahold of the bottle caps,” Wendy told her setting the cruise control.
Jo Ann opened the glove box and pulled out the binoculars she had found there when they’d stopped last night. Wendy had never checked the glove box, but remembered two pairs of binoculars that had been sitting on top of the gun safe. “I’m doing the best I can,” Wendy breathed out.
“You’re doing great,” Sally said from the back seat.
“Yeah! You’ve fought bad guys, drove us through sharks, made sure there was food and water, saved Noah, outran a tornado…” Jo Ann stopped, throwing her hands up. “I can’t even name all the stuff you’ve done, you’re like Wonder Woman!”
Glancing over, Wendy sighed feeling rather bashful at the praise. “Thank you, guys.”
They both smiled back and then Jo Ann lifted the binoculars up and looked ahead. It wasn’t much longer before the boys woke up. Sally made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Noah as Jo Ann made up a bottle for Ryan.
“That’s the last of the bread,” Sally announced, wadding the plastic bag up. When Ryan reached to grab the bag, Sally rolled down the window and tossed it out. “We still have crackers, soup, and like a million of those trail bars.”
“If we get a chance, we’ll stop and look around,” Wendy said, looking ahead. “We’re in Alabama.”
“I want another state that starts with ‘A’,” Jo Ann said, looking through the binoculars.
Reaching over, Wendy patted Jo Ann’s leg. “Me too, baby.”
Seeing a semitrailer blocking over half the road, Wendy moved over to the other lane and slowed because she couldn’t see around it. Getting closer, Wendy slowed more at seeing the semi was jackknifed and had plowed into four other cars.
Glancing down at the ditch, Wendy slowed and drove into the ditch. “Why do those cars have holes in them?” Jo Ann asked.
“What?” Wendy gasped, steering the Tahoe back to the road and looking over at the wreck. A black sports car had bullet holes along the passenger side and Wendy could see two people up front. The next car she saw had a man hanging out the passenger side, holding a pistol in his dead hand.
“Those are bullet holes, girls,” Wendy groaned, pulling away from the wreck. “That’s why I stopped in Miami and shot those guys before they could get close.”
“We can shoot out the windows and you can drive,” Sally offered.
Laughing, “Girls, you just started learning guns and have only held the guns,” Wendy said. “Tell you what though,
