“There’s a couple of truck stops on this exit. I say we go check them out and see what we can find.” Drew suggested.
“They’ll have already been looted. We’re better off searching houses.” LeBron said.
“A lot more likely to get shot trying to break into houses. Anybody who’s still alive will have learned to stay quiet. They’ll have weapons to defend their places. They won’t like us trying to bash our way in to steal their stuff. We beep the horn to see if anybody’s home and we’ll have curious surgers coming around to see what’s going on.” Bart said.
Bart didn’t think he’d be around much longer between the infection and the way the world was going. He was lost without Nancy by his side. Before he went though, he wanted to do his best to set the kids up for success. He hoped he could hang on long enough to make a difference. In the interim he’d decided one thing he could focus on was explaining all of his answers to them. He wanted them to learn from his experience. He needed them to see why he was pushing them in a certain direction. He really hoped his high fever wasn’t making all his answers come out sounding like a bunch of gibberish.
“That makes sense. Let’s go hit the truck stops. Maybe the showers are still working.” Drew said.
“That’d be so awesome.” Yue responded shuddering in pleasure at the thought of getting truly clean.
They piled back into the Expedition after a brief discussion on whether it was better to sneak up on foot or drive over and park. They opted for driving in since that gave them the option of easily driving out. None of them were delusional enough to think they could outrun a surger if they happened to bump into one. Drew drove them out of the woods and over to the truck stop by the interstate.
They parked between the gas pumps and the station. As they’d anticipated the front windows of the store were busted out. From where they were sitting the inside of the place looked like a tornado had torn through it. The shelves were toppled over, the freezer doors were flung open and there was junk all over the place. It was hard to tell from the parking lot if any of the stuff they were seeing was actually worth getting out of the truck for.
LeBron and Drew went in through the broken window while Yue shifted over to the driver’s seat. Bart sat up worriedly in the back struggling to keep an eye on his boys through the haze of his ever-increasing temperature. Inside the store LeBron and Drew sifted through key chains, bandanas and rotten fruit. Beside a toppled case of DVDs, they found a nice cache of personal hygiene products. Deodorant was a rare commodity in the apocalypse. At some point people were just going to have to get used to everybody smelling bad. The little personal packs of moist towelette wipes they found were going to make them Yue’s favorite brothers ever.
They ended up dragging a decent amount of stuff out of the building. Most of it being the toiletries they’d stumbled over. LeBron and Drew were both sporting T-Shirts proclaiming how much they loved Florida. They’d taken every stitch of clothing they could locate including the pile of bandanas. There’d also been a couple of knives left in a big knife display up by the counter. Someone had shattered the glass on the top and taken the ones they wanted leaving just the folding knives in it. They hadn’t been able to find any food or water. The showers weren’t working either.
“Alright. There’s still another truck stop a couple gas stations and that horror movie looking motel.” Drew said climbing in the truck after LeBron.
Yue nodded and took them across the street to the gas station and did a quick drive by. It looked like there might actually be some supplies in there worth getting. The window to this one had been broken out too. Drew and LeBron hesitated to jump right in since there was a dead body in the parking lot and a few more cadavers littered the floor inside the station. Drew checked his weapons and took a deep breath before walking the short distance to the broken window to climb inside. LeBron stood outside covering him and waiting for the all clear.
Yue watched nervously as Drew entered the gas station. She couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t like they hadn’t seen dead bodies lying all over the place before so that wasn’t it. As sad and horrible as it was the sight of dead people was becoming pretty commonplace. There was something else that was pulling at her. It suddenly struck her. Why did this store still have supplies in it when the others they’d seen were pretty much empty?
Drew stood tall in the dimly lit building. The overhang to the walkway leading to the pumps cast a long shadow across the front of the building. The front row of shelves looked picked clean as expected. The rows towards the back looked like some of them might not have even been touched yet. Drew cautiously walked down the aisle towards the shelves with merchandise still neatly stacked on them. He
