Once they were back on the main road again, it was late afternoon, and by the time they finally reached the other side of Oswego, they had all agreed to stop for the day.
As they entered the small town of Martville, and pulled into a large field, Frank found himself wondering more and more what the kiss had meant.
They made a half-way decent meal out of the canned goods they carried with them, and once they tired of rehashing the day’s events, one by one they went off to find a place to sleep. They had sleeping bags, and rather than set up the tents they had also brought with them, they all agreed they would rather use the bags.
Frank watched as Mike walked off in one direction with Gina. Obviously something had sparked with those two, he thought. He sat talking quietly with Gary and John, as well as Annie. When he finally said his goodnights, a few hours later, Annie got up, and saying goodnight, walked away by herself.
While Frank waited for sleep to come, he found that instead of thinking of all the bad things that had happened, he was thinking of Annie, and all the good things that could happen.
TWO
~1~
The next morning they were on the road early. The going was still slow, but by noon they were on the outskirts of Alton, a small town about forty miles from Rochester. They were only thirty or so miles from Webster where they would turn off 104, and take route 250 into the small village of Fairport.
A run-down general store, with two old gas pumps sitting on a chipped concrete island, was all that marked the small town. The low speeds and constant use of the four wheel drive, had taken a toll on the fuel tanks of all three vehicles, so when Frank had spotted the small store as they passed a sign for the township limits; they had pulled off into the dirt parking area. The other two Jeeps followed him in and lined up by the pumps.
When Annie and Mike, along with Connie, had first picked up the jeeps, they had filled the tanks by siphoning gas from the dealership's underground tanks. It had been a fairly easy process as Mike had worked at a gas station before, and had been responsible for, among other things, checking the levels of the tanks and comparing them on a daily basis to the numbers on the pumps to make sure they matched up. He had known where to look for them. The tanks were fairly simple to access. A long piece of hose slipped down into the tank had been adequate to siphon the gas into cans and then fill the Jeeps.
Mike had found a hand operated pump, mainly used to pump kerosene from cans into small heaters, at the department store back in Oswego, and, along with Dave, had adapted the crank operated pump to use it to pump gasoline. The adaptation had been simple. A long section of heavy hose had been slipped over the pumps short tube, and held in place with a small hose clamp.
One by one the Jeeps were pulled over next to the underground tanks, and quickly filled. Annie had been impressed with the idea. It was a lot better than the mouthfuls of gas they had swallowed filling the Jeeps back in Watertown.
After the Jeeps were gassed up they decided to take a short break and eat lunch. They were all getting sick of the canned meat, so they foraged through the small general store to see what was available. Once each had found what they wanted, they had carried it out onto the wide front deck to eat.
Frank sipped at a cold beer while he sat in an old wooden chair eating a large bag of chips. Gary and John were talking quietly beside him.
"Where do you think the best place to go is?" Gary asked of John. They had been discussing several different places where people may have gathered. They were all hoping to find other people once they arrived in Rochester, but until now they had not discussed where to go once they arrived.
John answered. "Well, the compass is open. I think it would be a good idea to stay away from the North side though. The whole area has been run down for years, and I'm not so sure we'd want to meet anyone who was still alive in there."
"That bad, huh?" Frank asked.
"Actually, more than that bad," he replied. "When I was still living there, and still on the City Council, I remember we had constant problems there. The city was always being accused of not caring much about the north side, and to be honest it was based in fact to a certain extent. The city and the council, me included I hate to admit, did let it run down pretty much. Trouble was, when we tried to retake the neighborhoods we couldn't."
"Why?" Gary asked. "Didn't you have support from the neighborhoods?"
"Not really," John said. "Don't get me wrong. There were still a lot of good people trying to live there, but by the time the city stepped in, drugs had pretty much taken over. It got so the police couldn't even go in there after dark. The drug dealers knew it and used it to their advantage. After a while... well, the good people who had tried to change things just left. The last time
