“Thanks.” LeBron said around his deep breathing. He sounded more like he was prepping to teach a Lamaze class than like he’d just gotten his finger splinted. Drew twirled around the blood-soaked T-Shirt on his head to try and get a non-blood-soaked spot over the bleeding gash on his forehead. He was getting a little concerned by the amount of blood pumping out up there. He hadn’t brought a lot of extra shirts with him. Then he realized he had bags of bandages sitting all around him that he’d been rooting through for the splint he’d used on LeBron.
“How are we doing?” Drew asked Yue after he pulled out some gauze and thick bandages pads from one of the bags. Yue was driving, LeBron had a badly splinted broken pinkie and his dad was in La La Land in the backseat, so Drew worked on putting the bandage on his head himself while talking to Yue. He was having a hard time looking out the window while trying to get the bandage situated. He needed one more hand and he’d be good.
“It looks like downtown got bombed. I haven’t seen any crawlerz at all which has been a nice surprise.” Yue reported.
“You do know you shouldn’t say things like that out loud right?” Drew said. He was half joking but when you’re in a situation as bad as they were in why tempt fate?
“Whatever. How’s dad? Where are we going? I think we need to look for another car. This ones accelerating funny and it’s out of windows.” Yue responded. She was unimpressed by Drew’s superstitious nature. He always wore the same boxers on game day. He had a rabbits foot on his key chain. She was surprised he could leave the house in the morning without eating a bowl of Lucky Charms.
The question about where they were going was a good one. They had almost a hundred gallons worth of gas in jugs in the back. That gave them a pretty good reach. They had a good space of time where they wouldn’t have to worry about siphoning gas or attempting to figure out how to make a gas pump work with no electricity. Assuming every gas pump in America hadn’t been drained dry in the space of time between finding out the crawlerz were coming and the crawlerz actually coming. Where could they go? Where would be better than where they’d started from?
“I say we head north. Florida sucks without air conditioning.” LeBron said. His words sounded sleepy. The Oxy must finally be kicking in. About time.
“If we take the turnpike to the interstate there’s pretty much no major towns for a long time. Besides maybe Gainesville?” Yue was thinking out loud while she drove. The streets were pretty empty other than the occasional wrecked or abandoned car. They passed one little hybrid looking deal that had a dead body sticking out of the windshield and both doors standing wide open. A crawler must’ve jumped in and broken its neck on impact. The occupants had ditched the car and taken off running. Drew guessed they probably hadn’t made it too far. This wasn’t a world where people squeamish about picking a cadaver out of their windshield had much of a future.
“North works for me. I’m tired of walking around with permanent jock itch.” Drew chimed in.
“TMI.” LeBron said
“Gross”. His sister echoed the sentiment at the same time.
“Really.” Drew said pointing at the dashboard. “There are bloody chunks from the inside of a dead stranger smeared all over the dashboard. Me mentioning my crotch rash is what gets at you both though?”
That cracked LeBron up. It may have been the Oxy fueling his inappropriate laughter, but it still got Yue and Drew chuckling along as well. It felt good to laugh about something again.
“North it is.” Yue said turning onto the on-ramp that’d take them up on the toll road leading eventually to the turnpike. Drew decided that Yue had probably reached her threshold for dealing with stuff for the day. He generously forbade himself from asking why she was still using her blinkers every time she made a turn. At least for the rest of the night. He promised himself that if they were still alive in a day or two, he’d give her crap about it then.
Chapter 19: North
The turnpike was a great idea until it wasn’t. Yue had been worried when they first got on the toll road that there was going to be massive car pileups. She’d pictured them having to get out and walk down the side of the road past mile after mile of stalled vehicles. It was the standard scene from a zillion end of the world type movies she’d watched with her brothers. It’d actually turned out to be pretty clear sailing until they hit the overturned tractor trailers on the turnpike. Thinking about it she realized there’d never really been a mass exodus type day. People had plenty of time to get where they wanted to be before the crawlerz started actually spreading across the country.
The overturned eighteen wheelers were stretched from guardrail to guardrail. It was still about an hour before the sun would be all the way up. There was already enough light to see the guardrails had been smashed flat on one side. Of course, it was the side with a steep slope going down into a drainage ditch that ran along the road.
“We might be able to make it around.” Drew said doubtfully. He got out of the car and walked over to the edge of the road with his flashlight and rifle to check it out. LeBron followed along a second later.
They’d need to transform the Traverse into a gravity defying hovercar to make it around that side. LeBron and Drew had a rough time getting around it on foot. Once they
