Lana gripped my arm tight for a second before settling back. “We have to get to them.”
“We’ll get out of town today.” I pulled up Google maps and checked the distance. “1658.6 miles. So, only twenty-five hours. Easy peasy,” I said, keeping my tone light. It had taken us hours to go mere blocks last night, but perhaps today would be different. I tried not to think of the roadblock, of the man the police had shot, about Rod, or Tonia downstairs who had lost her boyfriend and her son. “We should get on the road as soon as possible.”
“What if they won’t let us out?”
“They can’t block every road.” I study the map on my small screen, wishing I had brought my tablet with me. I’d left it because I hadn’t figured I’d have time to use it. Between sightseeing and enjoying the alone time with Lana, I had hoped to be too busy for anything else. “We could go south some, see if we can get out by heading toward Lincoln. Or …” I spread my fingers, zooming in on the map. “We could go north, head to this town called Blair? It’s small and it’s in the right direction.”
“Have they texted back yet?” she asked instead of making a choice.
“No.” I’d been waiting for the notification chime too. At least we could still text them. The phone lines weren’t working though. I thumbed off the noise of the ‘all circuits are busy’ lady and sighed. “We should go.”
“What about Tonia and her aunt?”
I shrugged. We could offer to take them with us, but I didn’t think Tonia would say yes and anyway, I wasn’t sure how we’d get a woman in a wheelchair safely out of the house and into the SUV. “We can ask. They probably have a car though.” We hadn’t seen inside the garage after all.
“We’ll need food.”
“We’ll get some. We can take water with us, too. I’m sure they’ll let us take some water. It looked like there was a small bag of recycling in the kitchen, plastic bottles and stuff. We could wash and fill those.”
Lana nodded. “Will you ask while I go to the bathroom? Then we go.”
“Got it, boss.”
We went downstairs and I knocked gently on the door I’d seen Tonia disappear behind. She answered it, her eyes red and puffy. “I’m sorry to bother you … Lana and I are going to leave soon. Did you want us to take you guys somewhere?”
She shook her head, a frown forming. “Radio said to stay put.”
“I know, but we have kids—older kids with our parents—that we need to get back to and a long road to get there. We need to go as soon as we can.”
“You should stay put.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’m scared for my boys.” I didn’t want to say more, didn’t want to shove it in her face that my boys were alive while hers were dead but it hit her anyway.
She sank into herself, her arms going around her middle as if I’d punched her. “Yeah, I get it.”
“Can we—?” I didn’t get the rest of the words out because she shut the door in my face.
When I joined Lana in the kitchen, she raised her eyebrows. “Well?”
I gave her the rundown and she sighed. “It’s so awful. I wish we could ease her pain.”
“Me too.” I grabbed the sack and eased open the knot, then put the bottles we could use on the counter.
“She didn’t say we could?” Lana asked.
“Nope. But since it was in a trash bag, I’m going to assume they won’t mind.” We washed them well in warm, soapy water, and then filled them with fresh water from the tap. I put them in grocery sacks I found stashed in a homemade bag hanging on the back door and set them by the side door. I looked out at the street. It was quiet, nothing moving, no cars. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was a sleepy Sunday morning.
“All’s clear,” I said when I returned to the kitchen. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“It was clear out there when I looked,” I said, but we stood at the window and watched the street for a good ten minutes before we ventured outside.
Lana had written them a note and placed it on the kitchen table, a thank you note and condolences. They were beautiful words and I hoped Tonia would find some comfort in them.
We checked the backseat before we got in, then shut the doors and locked them, the water bottles stashed in the back. I plugged my phone into the charger that had been in the SUV when we took it and then sat there for a moment realizing I was about to leave town in a car that wasn’t mine.
“Is this how our kids feel when they play Grand Theft Auto?” I asked as I put our stolen—appropriated—vehicle into reverse.
“We aren’t planning on dooring prostitutes and drug dealers, are we?”
“If they start singing kids song and screaming they’re hungry, we might be.” I drove in the opposite direction of the way we’d come last night. No point going back and risk being seen by the blockade. We needed to get out of town, which meant we had to keep from getting caught up in a military roundup or quarantine.
We came across one of them a few minutes later.
She was standing in the middle of the street, her hand clasping what looked like a TV remote. Her other arm was a bloody mess of bites. She turned when she heard us and we saw she was crying. “Please stop. I need help. Please!” Her hand lifted, the one that held the remote, and she
