Steel Horizon

Chapter Two

Two days earlier

 Three miles outside of Salt Lake City, I found a car with the keys still in the ignition and a half tank of gas. The green little Honda wasn't made for winter, nor were its tires, but I made do and tried to drive slow where I knew the roads were slick, absently flipping through the radio stations that no longer existed.

As always, just static.

I saw nobody on the roads, and thankfully, no Scrappers either.

A few weeks ago, I saw people traveling everyday. Hundreds of them trying to get somewhere safe, like birds migrating south for the winter. Nowadays, it was just me. I don't know what happened to them all.

I drove until the car ran out of gas, and I was forced to either find another car or walk. Traveling was more difficult than it once was.

The miles I covered in a day would have taken a few hours at the most a couple months ago. I constantly come across abandoned cars at road blocks too thick to get through, and with winter churning away through its season, the roads were almost too treacherous to drive with being unplowed.

At nightfall, I pulled over into an abandoned rest stop. I shouldn't say abandoned because everything was abandoned. I parked the car behind the building, out of sight from the road and unwanted eyes.

Before going inside I paused and gazed at the setting sun. With the sky painted pink and orange, stretching over the thin clouds, I could almost pretend it was any other night. But I could only think that while looking at the sky. It was the only thing unchanged. The moon. The stars.

When my gaze drifted down onto the deserted highway, absent of headlights and the constant sound of traffic, it brought me back to the world in which I lived. I could do all the wishing in the world, but none of it would matter.

Different world, different rules.

I locked myself into the men's restroom since the women's had a foul stench coming from under the door, and I had no desire to know how that person ended their life. Not even for a chance to find a gun, or supplies. It wasn't worth it to me.

I sat in the corner farthest away from the door on a small bed roll, too thin to make my dreams better. The small candle flickered dully off the white-stained walls, and I missed watching TV. I sat there, shivering with the cold wall against my back, and wondered if I would get any sleep. I wasn't sure which was worse: staying awake to deal with the monsters of reality, or sleeping, just to be thrown back into the nightmares before the Scrappers ever came.

I never had a choice because I had to deal with them both.

Two days later and I was in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The day was cold. No snow fell from the sky but the air nipped at my lungs every time I inhaled, making the insides of my nose freeze. I trudged down the snow drifted road with numb cheeks and cold fingers. For the last day I was without a car. The roads were too icy and too steep for driving, even worse when I had to maneuver around other cars. I found it faster, and safer, to walk.

With the sun too bright reflexing off the snow, I wore my favorite aviators that made me feel a little like Tom Cruise. The breeze ruffled my short hair, blowing stray strands over my face. I was numb now, my strides in the same rhythm for the last couple hours, and I counted the stranded cars as I passed them. I checked them off in my head, focusing on something besides the road ahead and everything else around me. It was how I stayed sane.

Five hundred and forty-three.

I stopped, popped the collar of my wool coat against the bitter wind, and looked down the hill before me. A small town was nestled at the bottom, quiet and undisturbed under the fresh blanket of snow. My back screamed at me to sleep in a bed, but the dark houses, all screaming with others people memories and smells, was what kept me away.