The thought sent shivers down her spine, and she watchedthem, a feeling of sadness creeping over her... the sort of feeling she used toget when she sat in her Mom's front yard watching ants. She would look down atthem and feel guilty for how much power she had over them, walking about ontheir six legs, carrying bits of food back and forth to their anthill. Theirlives were meaningless. At any moment she could step on them, and wipe them offof the face of the earth. The only thing keeping these soldiers fromexperiencing the same fate was time. Sooner or later, they would go down,crushed into the pavement of the bridge by the giant boot heel of the dead.
Did they know? Were the soldiers aware that their time asliving members of the human race was coming to an end? She supposed they had toknow, but they continued on anyway, like those ants, simply because that's whatthey did. They were soldiers. As long as there was an enemy to fight, they weregoing to keep plugging away like a punch-drunk prizefighter whose best dayswere in the past.
"Come on. Let's go pick a car to sleep in," Joansaid, breaking Clara free from her morbid line of thought.
She looked at Joan, at her tired eyes, her dirty clothes,and smiled. "What makes you think I want to spend the evening locked in acar with you?"
Joan frowned, not picking up on Clara's joking tone."I just thought that..."
Clara waved her hand dismissively, "I'm joking. Ofcourse. Let's see what we can find." They wandered around the clearing onthe bridge, looking into the vehicles. As they looked into a broken-windowedSUV, the sun went down behind the hills, plunging them into blue shadows. Thewindows of the vehicle had been broken out, but there was no blood or goreanywhere. Joan tried the door on her side, but it was locked. Clara reached outand pulled the door handle, expecting it to be locked as well, and it was. Fora second, she felt like a fool, and then reached in through the broken windowand unlocked the door. The power locks still worked.
She wondered how long that would be the case. How longwould the battery in the car allow people to lock and unlock these doors? Itwas like many things in the world now, a ticking time bomb of extinction forthe people and the things they had created to make their life easier. Even thecanned food that sat unfound on the shelves of abandoned houses would go badeventually. Every car in the world would need a jump start in another couple ofmonths. She looked down at her shoes. How long would they last?
Inside the SUV, there was nothing, just a dirty interiorand little squares of safety glass sprinkled over the seats. She wiped theglass off the seat, and then sat down inside. She looked at all of the dialsand gadgets on the dashboard, and wondered if the car would come on. Some heatin the middle of the night would be good. On the windshield, drops of rainbegan to fall. Fat splats that spoke of a coming storm. It was mere secondsbefore they could see nothing out of the windshield.
"Just in time," Joan said.
Clara just nodded her head and tried to adjust the seat.No luck. Even that was electric. "Shit," she muttered, just as Joandiscovered the problem herself. "You want to sleep in the back?"
"Sure. I just want to sleep. I'm exhausted,"Joan said.
Clara looked over at her and knew exactly what she meant.She too was on the edge of consciousness. sliding in and out of awareness. Theyslid out of the SUV and waved over at Mort who was sitting inside a beat-up oldsedan watching them. He just smiled through the rain.
They pulled the back of the SUV open and found nothingyet again. The soldiers had most likely looted every car that they had moved.They climbed into the back and pulled the door shut behind them. They lay onthe scratchy gray carpeting of the vehicle's bed and tried to close their eyes.
The sound of the rain had never seemed so loud to her.Thousands of droplets fell from the sky to splatter the pavement and the roofover their heads. The tinny noise pulled her off to sleep. Through the noise,she would occasionally hear the sound of a gun being fired. It was comfortingto her, and though she felt that she should stay awake and stay alert, she wasgone within five minutes of laying down.
****
Clara stood before a motorcycle, a basic model that wascalling to her. The buildings around her shot up to the sky, blocking it outbut for cracks here and there. Their fronts were windowless and plain. Theydidn't even have doors. She sat on the bike because she had to keep moving. Tostop was to die. Once on the bike, she looked at the knobs and dials and wonderedjust how to start it. She had never ridden a motorcycle before, and the workingswere all knew to her. She spotted the gas gauge, the speedometer, and a strangegauge that said life with the needle pointing at the top next to the word"full."
That was odd, she thought. Then she heard a noisebehind her, the scraping of feet on concrete. It was him... Courtney. The namerang through her mind, sending alarm signals throughout her body. Courtney knewhow to ride a motorcycle.
"Help me," she said.
But Courtney didn't acknowledge her. He just walkedtowards her, his hands clutching at the air, and his feet scraping across theground. She looked down and saw that he wore no shoes and that the flesh
