After the End

Chapter 4

"Gah- son of a-"

"What happened?" I ask, secretly hoping he'd grabbed another spider.

"Nothing," he mutters.

We'd been riding all afternoon following the trail as closely as we could, but that had been getting harder as the sun steadily slipped out of view falling beneath the horizon until only slivers of light remained. Even those were beginning to fade away now, the songs and calls of birds replaced by the chirping of crickets.

Darkness taking over meant we had to navigate the barren land with only a pair of weak flashlights, they're helpful sure, but no substitute for the Sun. To make matters worse we had lost the trail Emma left behind, no sunlight meant we weren't able to look for the caps using the glint they give off from sunlight hitting them. Which had been our main strategy for some time.

Levi is on his hands and knees a few feet away, searching the ground for a cap he swears he saw. His horse, Shadow, stands close by looking down at him curiously.

I search closer to the road we'd been traveling on, hoping Emma stuck to it as much as possible when she left. My horse, Rose, is tied to a tree nearby, quietly chewing on a bush.

"Flynn! I got something."

Levi holds the cap in the air, throwing his arms up in celebration. Shadow lets out an excited neigh and wags his tail. Prompting a laugh and smile from Levi.

He tosses me the cap, and no doubt about it, we're back on the trail.

We mount the horses, then give them each a small carrot that Paige left in their saddlebags. They gobble them up in seconds.

Then we continue our search, this time keeping our flashlights trained on the trail to avoid losing it...again. It leads through thick woods filled with twists and turns, tall grass often hides the caps until we are right on top of them, causing a fair amount of frustration.

We continue on until the sun is completely gone, those last slivers of light finally fading away entirely and giving way for moonlight to shine down, bathing the ground in a white glow that, in a surprising turn of events, helps us keep track of the bottle caps instead of adding to the list of things that makes the search more difficult.

"Why does she even have this many bottle caps," I ask, my voice bouncing in rhythm with Rose's footsteps.

Levi sighs, his breath producing a cloud of steam that rises slowly before vanishing into the night sky.

"I...don't know actually," he answers. "Maybe she collected them," he sighs longingly. "She had a lot of little hobbies like that. "

We ride in silence for a while longer, cold air threatening to numb my face and ears. The breeze that causes it snakes through the trees, prompting leaves to rustle and branches to shake all around us, coming together to create an atmosphere that could easily hide a creature from our senses. Something I'd prefer not thinking about.

Slowly the trees around us become smaller and spaced further apart, replaced by small bushes and shrubs surrounded by tall grass. A few more minutes and we're at the edge of the tree line, a wide open empty field lying ahead of us. A hill on the far side obstructs our view of what lies beyond.

The bottle caps lead us across the field and up the side of the hill, which the horses have trouble getting up, their horseshoes failing to grip the loose grass and dirt. Eventually though, with patience and probably some luck, we make it to the top of the hill. Where we spot what might be our destination.

Ahead of us, sitting at the center of a field similar in size to the last, is a large house that looks to be barely standing. Its many windows are either cracked or shattered, and the shutters that hang beside them have all fallen but one, which is only hanging by one or two nails.