“That guys going to be hanging out in his truck for forever.” Drew attempted a joke. His delivery was flat thanks to having gotten way too good of a look at the driver. This was all a lot to process. The fact that civilization was done. Wiped out by some weird fungus infested Discovery channel mummy freak show. It was a bad zombie movie. It still didn’t feel real. They were walking past a dead guy like it wasn’t even a big deal.
“Eventually it’ll be over. Someone will clean it all up. It may not be for a long time, but it’ll happen. We just have to make sure we’re still around.” LeBron said in response. He was feeling a lot better now that the Oxy had kicked in. His broken finger had gone from debilitating pain to a dull throb.
“You sound like the overly serious narrator guy at the end of a movie. Have you been sneaking extra Oxy?” Drew asked smiling at his semi-stoned brother.
They walked back to the car and gave Yue the bad news. Since they couldn’t go around the wreck, they were going to have to backtrack. Yue got them turned around while Drew worked on figuring out where they were. He was really missing the convenience of just being able to ask Siri to get him wherever he was going. Not that they really had a clue where they were going.
“If we get off at the next exit, we should be able to go around and get back on further north. Or, honestly, we could just stay on HWY-27. It pretty much goes straight north too.” Drew said staring at the atlas.
“Does it go through a bunch of towns though? We want to stay away from towns. That‘s why I like turnpikes and interstates.” Yue said before breaking into a big yawn. The yawn reminded all of them they’d been going hard with minimal sleep.
“Maybe we should stop and rest once we get off the turnpike. Look for a side road or something?” Drew asked.
“Sounds good to me. I’m in no real hurry to get to wherever it is we’re going to end up going. If we could find a car with windows and less intestines that’d make me pretty happy.” Yue said as she drove them the wrong way down the onramp to get off the turnpike. There was forest on both sides of the road. Yue looked for an opening then drove off the road and into the woods until they were hidden from view by the dense trees.
Drew started to say he’d take first watch, but Yue cut him off and told him to rest. She wanted to spend some time checking on their dad. She needed to change out his bandages and give him another dose of medicine. She was planning on checking Drews work on LeBron’s finger as well. Drew put his head back on the seat and almost instantly fell asleep. LeBron had already passed out on the drive to the exit. Yue climbed over them to get into the third row with her dad.
Bart didn’t look good. The stubble on his face didn’t do anything to cover up how pale he looked. He’d always been such a vibrant passionate force in Yue’s life that to see him as frail wasn’t really something she’d been prepared for. Fighting back her emotions she shoved her hand over his mouth to make sure she could feel him breathing. She could but it seemed like really shallow breaths to her. She jostled him around as she swapped out his bandages hoping to wake him up. She smiled to herself thinking it was the same strategy she used to use on the infants she’d babysat for her mom’s friends. If you didn’t make them a little angry then they’d just keep falling asleep halfway through their bottles and the moms would freak out that you were starving their babies to death.
Poking Bart around didn’t work. He was out for the count. Yue sat down and levered Bart’s head into her lap. She stared down at his grizzled white stubble covered face while wondering how she was supposed to feed antibiotic pills to a sleeping man. Everything they were trying to do made her feel ineffectual and useless. She didn’t have any delusions that she was up to the task of keeping her family alive. She needed Bart to wake up and take control. She needed her dad.
Sitting in the back with her dads head resting in her lap she let herself cry silently for a few minutes. Once she felt like she’d taken the edge off of her frustration she got her thermos straw and the pills in position and smacked Bart on the cheek. When that didn’t work, she smacked him harder and told him to wake up. Drew stirred around on the seat in front of her, but her dad remained sleeping. She poured some of the water from her thermos onto her dads face while telling him to wake up again.
The water did the trick. She was able to get him to swallow a couple of pills before he closed his eyes and went back to sleep. Shifting his head off of her she moved up a seat to take care of LeBron. Drew had actually done a decent
