“Did you sleep?” I whisper.
“Some,” he answers.
The only other person awake is Zac. Now he is sitting on his knees at the back of the bed of the truck. His elbows are propped on the top of the tail gate, and he is considering the sunrise, deep in thought.
I wonder what he is thinking.
As the morning sun shows itself further into the sky, the members of our group wake up one by one, the splendor of the sunrise lost on everyone who missed it.
“Where are we?” Eli asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Don’t know,” Jake says, “all of us slept all night.”
“Not me!” Zac interjects with a glint of sleepiness in his eye.
“Why not you?” Mar asks while rubbing her brother on his back.
“Well,” Zac begins, “Jake always says we need a look out, and last night…that was me.”
“You didn’t have to do that buddy,” Jake says.
“I know,” Zac squeals. “It’s ok, I have been able to keep track of how far we have gone.”
“How?” Samantha pipes up, being the last to wake.
“See up there?” Zac says while pointing to a monitor inside the truck. “It keeps track of distance or miles, I think that is what it’s called, and the device beside it keeps time.”
We all look at him in disbelief. He then pulls out a small piece of paper and Samantha’s pencil.
“Hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed this,” he says to Samantha.
She grunts in his direction in either anger, disgust, or in saying it’s okay. Either way, it doesn’t matter now.
“I put the time down when all of you fell asleep!” he begins. “Magi fell asleep first and Jake last. From the time Jake nodded off until he and Liz woke up, you had all been sleeping for nearly eight hours.”
“Oh, wow!” Jake exclaims. “That is the longest I have slept in years.”
“It’s okay,” Zac says, “you were all tired.”
“What about you?” I ask.
“I can sleep later,” he chuckles. “Anyway, in eight hours, we have gone through three minor checkpoints. My guess is there will be another one in an hour or so if we keep driving this direction.”
“Really!” Eli says in surprise.
“Yeah,” Zac answers. “I kept time, but with every three hours we traveled, we went around one-hundred and ten miles…I think.”
“That’s almost three-hundred miles since dark!” Jake exclaims.
“Are we still where the ocean was?” I ask.
“No!” Zac answers, we turned right around two hours ago and have been headed west since then.”
“Good job little man,” Mar praises him.
“Okay…Okay…I know I am the youngest one here,” Zac rants, “but I feel like I have more than pulled my weight.”
“You have,” Jake agrees.
“Then no more little man, buddy, Zakie, nothing. You got me? I am either Zac or Isaac to you, but nothing else.”
He says the words with such finality. You can tell he has been thinking about this for a while. Yes, he has done so much; put a bullet in a man’s back, kept watch, navigated. A sadness takes me over. I feel the war has claimed another soul. His childhood and innocence have been cut short so fast. He is only twelve!
“You got it, Zac,” Jake says. “Anything else?”
“Nope! Well, I heard them say they were planning to stop soon. Oh yeah,” his eyes sparkle with excitement knowing he is being treated so grown up. “There were no guards at any of the stations. They had to call on a radio and report what they were doing and why they were passing.”
“And…” Samantha says.
“And that’s it! I could never hear what they said exactly. Plus, I had to play like I was sleeping so they couldn’t find me out.”
“Good work little…Good work Zac,” my brother finishes.
“It was nothing,” he finishes with the biggest smile on his face.
He hands the paper to Jake and the pencil back to Samantha.
“You keep it,” Samantha smiles. “It looks like you can make better use of it than me.”
That is the first wonderful thing she has done in a while. I make a mental note to never count Samantha out in the humanity department, and to never underestimate Zac again.
After being updated with all that had gone on in the night, we sit quietly looking around for any sign of life. We are in an odd-looking place. It is somewhat like the R9, but much bigger. Maybe twenty-times bigger than where many of us came from.
In all directions are huge buildings that have long since crumbled under the pressures of time. Besides a few trees here and there, there are no signs of life at all. Not one single human or animal scurries in the shadows or runs from building to building. The few trees that peek out of the pavement look like nothing I have ever seen before. Each one of them are a different color. I wonder if they were born of the radiation that came with a bomb that was dropped during the war or if they had simply learned how to adapt to the dismal surroundings?
“What is this place?” I ask no one specific.
“The sign I saw coming in said Charlotte North Carolina,” Magi offers, “but that would not be what it is called on the map now. I think we are still outside the North and East Corridor intersection.”
Just as she finishes her statement, the truck takes a left down another broken road full of dilapidated buildings. Moments later, we take another left under a large cement block that has fallen from a nearby structure, another sign that war had ravaged the
