Yue had to blast another crawler out of her window when Drew slowed down to make the left turn in the intersection. Bart had woken up and was slumped against his back window staring out at the landscape as they drove. Drew gunned it hearing the big engine roar with power. They drove through a big pile of debris in the middle of the road with Drew saying the millionth prayer of the night in hopes that they didn’t rip open any tires. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel that there was a contingent of crawlerz closing in on them. It was that fear that was driving him to drive too fast.
One more crawler got close enough to pound on the driver side door. It tried to reach through his window but stumbled on something in the road and quickly fell behind the speeding truck. Drew continued to accelerate as he went around turns at a speed that had everyone convinced that they were on the verge of rolling into a ditch.
“Slow down! We’ll be just as dead if we crash!” Yue berated Drew. He slowly let his foot off the accelerator after multiple assurances that they’d outrun the threats. In the middle of nowhere again Drew took a hard right onto a small road leading to a dairy farm. He drove them through a field and into a small thicket of trees where he turned the engine off. They sat there just listening for a few minutes to see if they heard anything. When they didn’t hear or see anything they relaxed.
“Let’s keep it down this time. I’m leaving the engine turned off. Two of us on watch all night long. One looking forward one looking back.” Drew ordered.
“Got it. No Metallica and keep the lights off. How do we get these stupid dome lights to stay off?” Yue asked. She was playing with the light in the ceiling. She finally got the cover off and solved the problem by removing the little light bulbs.
Drew looked at his phone really quickly and noted it’d only been dark for about two hours. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 22: Ghetto Tank
They made it through the night without any more excitement. It turned out you just couldn’t sleep with air conditioning. With the truck turned off it was uncomfortably hot and humid in the little copse of trees Drew had parked them in. Every time they heard a squirrel drop a nut outside, they grabbed their guns positive they were all about to die. They switched off who was on watch periodically, but no one really got anything in the neighborhood of good rest. They did the two awake and one sleeping arrangement the entire night since they wanted Bart to get as much sleep as possible.
“Life without air conditioning isn’t worth living.” Yue grumbled grumpily as the sun came up. Dawn was the signal for ending the moratorium on conversations. They still needed to be quiet, but it wasn’t quite as life or death. There weren’t as many surgers running around during the day as there were crawlerz at night.
“I feel you.” LeBron said. He looked up at this brother in the front seat. Drew was out cold. There was a long string of drool dangling out of his mouth.
“That would make a great profile pic.” Yue joked. She sobered up quickly when she crawled into the backseat to check on their dad. Bart grinned up at her from the backseat. There was a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“Good morning sugar bear. How are you feeling today?” He asked.
“Fine dad. The question is how are you feeling today?” She sat down on the end of the bench seat by his feet and stared at him waiting for a response. He kept quiet for a moment working up an inventory of all his aches and pains to report to her. She waited patiently knowing she’d have to multiply his daily pain report by five to get close to the real number. She was a little worried he might get hooked on the pain pills. She’d decided she’d rather deal with him becoming an addict than make him deal with being in a ton of pain though. It was one of those damned if you do and damned if you don’t kind of scenarios.
“Other than the raging fire in my body from the infection, missing your mom and the general discomfort of sleeping outside in Florida not too bad. Oh yeah. There’s the pain also. I’m not a big fan of the pain.” Bart said smiling to soften the impact of his report. The misty-eyed look he got when he talked about their mom just about broke Yue’s heart.
“Great dad. Here’s a bunch of drugs to shut you up.” Yue handed Bart two antibiotics, a Tylenol and a Tylenol with codeine. She’d decided if one antibiotic didn’t do the trick, she’d double it up and try different ones. She had no idea if they might counteract one another or anything. She was glad her dad’s spirits seemed slightly better. She’d given him a whole valium the day before because he’d seemed overly depressed. He’d talked to himself while giggling for about an hour. She really wanted to avoid giving him another valium. She never wanted to relive that ultra-awkward experience ever again.
“I really wish those freaks would stop busting our windows out.” Drew muttered through a big yawn as he woke up. LeBron had poked him a few times to get him moving. It’d belatedly occurred to LeBron that they should have had one of the people who were
