“If there wasn’t anything blocking the highways, we’d be there in less than a day.”
Alice glanced at him from the passenger seat, the early morning sunshine settling on her hair so that it shone like oil. They were on a four-lane highway, the sides of the road still heavy with trees and brush, its stretched path through the country unblemished save for a motionless car every few miles that they pulled around without looking into. The occasional farm would appear, dormant, without movement except for a flag attached to a porch or a weathervane tattooed against the sky atop a silo. He could barely keep his eyes on the road for all there was to see beyond it. The sky, the fields, the houses. Everything so large, so open and wide. The whole world beyond the windows.
His stomach rumbled, and he placed one hand there. They’d risen early and eaten jerky since there was no hot water, and no one seemed in the mood for powdered eggs anyway. Without saying much of anything, they’d loaded the Tahoe and pulled away from the little farmhouse along with the glade it sat in. Now his appetite was returning again, the three square meals a day Graham had cooked only a memory from another life.
“Seems strange, doesn’t it?” Quinn replied. “That so much could change in a few days’ time?”
“Strange doesn’t touch it.”
“There’s other people out there; we just have to find them,” Ty said from the backseat. He’d awoken better rested than either of them, though Quinn knew that wasn’t where the boy’s unfailing optimism came from.
“You’re right, baby,” Alice said. “We’re on our way right now to look for them.”
“The army, right?” Ty asked.
“Yep.”
“Like Grandpa Fisher was in?”
Alice froze and something passed across her face. The clouds that were usually there deepening into a storm before sliding away again.
“He was in the Navy,” Alice corrected him, but the timbre of her voice wavered on the last word. Quinn threw her a glance before focusing on the road once again.
“And when we find them, they’ll protect us, right, Momma?”
“Yes, they will.”
“From the monsters.”
“Yes, from the monsters.”
“You’re not scared of them, though, are you, Quinn?” Ty asked. He could feel the boy’s small hands gripping the back of his seat to pull himself as far forward as his seatbelt would allow.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Quinn said. “But we can learn from the things that scare us.”
“Like what?”
“We can learn how to beat them. We can learn about ourselves.”
Alice shot him a look that he couldn’t quite interpret.
“You mean like what makes us scared?” Ty said after a pause.
“Something like that, yes.”
“Momma’s scared of fire.”
“Ty, that’s enough,” Alice said, turning in her seat. Her voice cut the air of the vehicle like a knife, and Quinn heard Ty sit back. Alice shifted again, her eyes staring out the windshield at the road that spooled away from them.
Quinn cleared his throat. “We should stop sometime soon for gas and water.”
“Yeah. Next town is Belford. It’s coming up in three miles,” Alice said, consulting the map on her phone.
“Wonder how long the towers will hold,” Quinn said, motioning to the device.
“Not sure. The power might stay on for weeks, but when that goes, I’m guessing the service will too.”
“Then we’ll have to consult an actual paper map.” Quinn gave an exaggerated shiver.
Alice chuckled. “Where the hell are we even going to find something like that?”
Quinn reached out and tapped the glove compartment. “I put one in there before we left the house.”
“You were thinking ahead. Were you doing that for us or had you already planned on coming with?”
“For you.”
Alice nodded and smoothed her hair back behind her ear. “We still haven’t talked about what’s going to happen.”
“Happen?”
“I know you’re here now, and maybe you think you’re some kind of knight or something…”