Caitlan side-stepped around a dead skunk in the middle of the highway that had been mowed down weeks before. The smell was bad, but it had probably been worse a few days earlier. “I thought you were a farmer. Sounds to me like you spent most of your time driving from one hick town to the next.”
“Farming doesn’t simply involve sitting on a tractor twenty-four hours a day... I used to get out. What do you do for a living... I mean what did you do?”
“I suppose you’re just itching to know what a fat black chick is doing driving around in an eighty-thousand dollar car. Is that what you’re asking me?”
Hayden shrugged. “I could care less how you got the Audi. It was a simple question. I told you I was a farmer.”
“I’m a writer. And don’t go waiting for me to say I was a writer, because I still am.” She pointed to her forehead. “I’m storing it all away up here.”
“You wrote about end of the world stuff?”
Caitlan laughed. “As a matter of fact, I did. Good market for that shit, but I made most of my money in erotic romance. Enough to buy a different Audi for each day of the week.”
“I didn’t think people even read anymore. There aren’t as many bookstores around.”
“It’s all on-line these days. You can have an e-book in your hands in less than ten seconds. Erotic, science-fiction, end-of-the-freaking-world. All it takes is a credit card.”
“I’m afraid your publishing days have hit a snag.”
“Tell me about it. Farming’s gone to shit as well.”
They continued down the highway. A mile further they came across the first abandoned car sitting on the gravel shoulder. The doors were locked. Caitlan smacked one of its windows. “Why did so many people lock their damned cars? Did they wander off expecting to find a mechanic to fix the things?”
“I didn’t get the chance to lock any of my vehicles.” Hayden was staring south, out across a desolate field. “They were incinerated in my yard.”
“Didn’t you say you came from up north?” Hayden nodded. “I can see them wiping out the bigger cities, but what was so important that way?”
Everything, Hayden almost responded. My farm, my animals, the woman I loved. My life. “I think it was a dud. Probably meant for something further south. There were missile silos just south of the Canada/US border.”
“Hell of a fuck-up.”
Hayden didn’t respond. He was digging his fingers into the abandoned car’s gas cap cover, trying to swing the metal door open.
“Not like that.” She pushed down on it and it clicked back open. “Farm boys should know how to open a gas tank.”
He unscrewed the black plastic cover within, and peered into the small hole. “We need some kind of tube to feed in there.”
“Oh, I’ve got about ten feet of it in my back pocket. I also have a jerry can shoved up my ass in case of emergencies.”
They found another locked vehicle half a mile on. Hayden took a rock from the ditch and smashed his way in through the passenger side. He rummaged through the glove box and console finding nothing of value. He tried the trunk button, but it did nothing. Caitlan was already a hundred yards down the highway.
“You can break into a hundred of these things along the way,” she said once he’d caught up. “It ain’t going to help without something to carry the gas in. Hopefully we’ll find what we need in that town of yours. How much further?”
“Two miles... maybe three.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and slowed his pace, allowing the shorter woman to keep up. “Did you have family, Caitlan?”
“Everyone’s got family.”
“You know what I mean. Were you with anyone when it happened?”
“I was with my partner, Megan.” She looked up at Hayden. “You gonna give me flack for being a lesbian, too?”
“I could care less that you’re gay, or that you’re black... Or that you’re a bad-tempered, paranoid bitch. I’m just trying to make conversation.”
Caitlan studied her worn sneakers as they walked, and remained quiet for a full minute. When she spoke again, her voice was much softer. “We were thirty miles east of Winnipeg when it happened. We pulled over onto the side of the road like all the other folks were doing and got out to watch. My God, Hayden... I never thought I would see a real mushroom cloud. I wrote about stuff like that, you know? Pictured it in my mind dozens of times. But to see it actually happening before your eyes?” She started to weep. “It was... beautiful. I hated myself for thinking it, but it was true. I still think it’s true. Watching something that destructive, that powerful... all the people it wiped out.”
Hayden hadn’t seen it happen. He had been nestled inside a hole in a hill with his son and horse. He thought about Jake Heez. Jake had seen it happen. It had boiled skin off his body, and burned the sanity from his mind at the same time. As bad as it had been for Hayden, there were others who’d suffered far worse.
“What happened to Megan? Why isn’t she with you now?”
“Some asshole driving a semi came along, gawking along with all the rest of us. Megan wasn’t standing far enough off the shoulder... he ran her over doing fifty miles an hour.”
Hayden stopped and watched her walk along another half dozen steps. “I shouldn’t have called you a bitch.”
Caitlan turned to him. “You calling me that stuff is probably the nicest thing you’ve said since we met, and I deserved every word of it. Yeah, I lost the woman I loved... but you lost loved ones, too. So
