She looked out the window as Drew drove past an RV. What a great idea! They were driving around in a big comfortable house on wheels. They didn’t have anything welded over the windows though, so they were most likely sacrificing security for comfort. The big bearded guy sitting in the front passenger seat was glaring at them pretty hard as they drove by. He had good reason to be glaring since Yue was already thinking of ways to steal the guy’s RV.
“What’s that guy’s deal?” Drew asked loudly. It’d been a while since anyone had said anything. Bart had fallen back asleep at some point and LeBron had lapsed into a semi-depressed slump. Yue was the only other person in the truck who’d even noticed the angry bearded RV guy.
“Who cares. I’m more interested in trying to find ourselves an RV. The sleeping arrangements in here suck. I’m going to need my own private chiropractor and a bucket of muscle relaxers after another night or two of sleeping in here.” Yue rubbed the back of her neck for emphasis.
“Getting diesel may be an issue. Probably the same deal as regular gas would be is my guess.” Drew said thinking it over. They were driving through a populated section of the interstate so the number of surgers had increased. There were also a lot more wrecked vehicles scattered around that he had to dodge. The increased number of surgers probably correlated directly to the increased number of wrecks on this section of the interstate.
“We could get a travel trailer or something to pull along behind us. Seal up the windows somehow and we’d have a nice safe place to spend every night.” Yue said. They were both thinking of the dents in the side of the Expedition they were driving. Not to mention how fast the crawlerz had ripped apart the defenses they’d put up around their house. A cheap light weight pop up camper wasn’t going to be the long-term solution in a world like this.
Drew was guesstimating how much extra gas it’d take to tug along a travel trailer when his musings were cut short by the sound of gunfire up ahead. They were driving fast to avoid the random surgers who kept coming at them. If they slowed down to turn around the surgers would be all over them on this confined section of the road. If they kept going, they were heading straight into whatever kind of trouble was associated with the noisy gunfire coming from up ahead. They’d been trying to get through Ocala, the city they were currently driving through, before it got dark.
Yue didn’t bother saying anything when Drew started accelerating. She reached over and shook LeBron awake before turning around to check on their dad. He was asleep again, so she decided to leave him alone for the moment. She turned back around to face the front right as Drew took his foot off the gas. Up ahead the reason he’d slowed down was turned over on its side with a few dozen surgers rushing towards it.
One of those short school buses like you’d see for an afterschool dance or karate place was on its side in the middle of the grassy median. A woman was standing on one side of it firing a hunting rifle with an expensive looking scope at the surgers rushing towards her. A man was lifting a young girl onto the top of the overturned bus to try and save her. He had his rifle in a sling on his back. The desperate last stand played out quickly over the next few seconds. So quickly that Drew never even had a chance to get them all killed by trying to rescue the doomed little group.
The girl was barely stable on top of the bus when a surger leapt into the air and grabbed her. The surger let its momentum carry it and the girl off to the other side of the bus where it rode her like a sled through the grass. A few surgers on that side of the bus lunged towards the pair. The man was pulled down from behind by an oversized man beast who’d managed to wade right through the hail of bullets being laid down by the woman. The woman’s magazine dried up on her and she was carried to the ground screaming in a pile of teeth and clawed fingers.
Two surgers smacked into the side of the Expedition hard enough to snap them out of watching the drama unfold. Drew floored it to beat through the mob converging on the overturned bus. Momentum was their friend. They passed the bus and kept moving. A depressed silence reigning supreme until the surger covered bus was out of sight.
“Why’d you slow down?” Yue asked Drew out of the blue.
“They were in trouble. I don’t know.” Drew said staring straight ahead.
“You do know if you’d tried to help them, we’d all be dead right now. Including your little brother, right? There was nothing we could do for those people.” Yue said. She wanted to be compassionate. She knew her brother had a huge heart. That huge heart could end up getting them all killed.
“That little girl though…” Drew started to say something, but the rest was lost in sobs. Yue leaned forward and put her hand on his shoulder. Partially to comfort him but mostly because they were driving almost eighty miles an hour down a road littered with wrecks and bloodthirsty cannibals who were trying their best to run
