“We’re going to work on it,” Dad said, sighing. “We’ll work on yours, and we’ll have to teach Ash. And we’re going to work on defensive fighting too.”
“Well, at least I have practice in that,” I said, under my breath. I knew I could hold my own against a human with average strength. I didn’t know what the strength of an Awakened was, but I imagined it would probably be above human capabilities. It was my gun skills that were causing all the problems. “So…Nebraska?”
Dad nodded, turning the car on again. The familiar scent of gasoline and exhaust filled the air, and he started to back out of the woods, slowly, navigating around trees and roots and other obstacles in our path. “It’s the safest place. There’s been talk…of a place in Colorado, near Mesa Verde National Park, a sanctuary that has been built to be a safe zone.”
“In three days, someone built a place to escape to?” I asked, skeptically. “It just…doesn’t seem that likely.”
“Rumor is that they built it years ago in event of any sort of catastrophe. Colorado is a rich, abundant area, but far enough from the coast, in case of, I don’t know, tsunamis or some other natural disaster,” he explained, finally making it to the edge of the road. It was pitch black, not a light in sight. We were far enough away from the local town to be blind to its light and there were no other cars on the highway. “It’s a bunch of bullshit, people reaching out for something to have hope for in hopeless times. We’re going to Nebraska.”
He flipped his turn signal, most likely out of habit, and pulled back onto the winding road. I let us get a few miles, nearly to the town, when I asked one last question. “And…and the bombs?”
“After we had holed up in the station for three days, we were ordered to evacuate the stations, go home and lock ourselves in the house. That’s the sort of order they’ve announced all over the country, to go home and lock yourself in. I was about to leave, but I wanted to grab a few things. I heard the commissioner, and I wondered why he hadn’t left.”
“I stopped, thinking maybe he needed help, but he was on the phone. I was surprised because the phones had gone out, or so I thought. I’m not sure who he was talking to, but I heard enough to figure out what was going on. They were giving up. They wanted to control the Awakened population as much as they could. Bombs were going to drop at nineteen hundred hours, which gave me a short window of time. So I crept away, grabbed the car that I had been stocking for our departure and came to get you.”
“Now, go to sleep, both of you,” he said. “I’m going to stop in a few hours, and we’ll take turns keeping watch. I need sleep too.”
“Okay,” I whispered, resting my head on my hands against the door.
“Oh, and, Zoey?”
I looked up at him, waiting for a “good night” or an “I love you,” maybe even an “I’m sorry.” Instead he said in a very defeated voice, “Merry Christmas.”
I felt my eyes fill, and I turned away from him, drifting back to sleep, hoping that it would be dreamless.
A COUPLE HOURS LATER, I felt a hand shaking me awake. I jumped, startled, my hand immediately going to my gun.
“It’s fine. It’s just me,” Dad said, soothingly. “I need some sleep. I haven’t really slept in days. Do you mind taking watch?”
I nodded, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I glanced at the backseat, where Ash was stretched out. His mouth was hanging wide open, and I wondered for a moment if he drooled. I smiled a little and adjusted my seat so that I was sitting upright. Dad lay back in his own seat and was passed out in seconds.
It was still dark outside, and we were in the middle of nowhere, no lights around to permeate the blackness that pressed against the windows. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket to check the time; it seemed to be the only purpose for keeping it now. The numbers blinked up 4:32 a.m. at me, and I was surprised at how long my dad had been driving and how close we were to morning.
I did the math in my head, trying to figure out where we could possibly be. There was still a thick forest around us, so we hadn’t come near the flat plains of the middle states. We’d driven for about two hours before stopping for supplies, and my dad had driven for roughly eight to nine hours. I guessed we were somewhere in Ohio, maybe even Indiana. That left us with a lot of ground left to cover, at least 16 hours left in the car. We were all so exhausted, and I didn’t know how fast we could make it there without making any stops.