Apophis: A Love Story for the End of the World

Chapter Fourteen: Make Plans, God Laughs

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The next morning, I changed our strategy. Up until this point, we'd been following the sun and going west. It was a safe plan – conservative – but there was no guarantee that we'd ever find a town that way.

"We have to follow a road," I announced when we'd finished our breakfast of snow and a can of fruit cocktail divided between us.

Nora raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that breaking one of your dad's rules?"

"Spending the night here was breaking one of his rules, too," I pointed out. "We don't really have a choice." I had actually slept pretty soundly compared to our night in the cave, a mixture of discomfort from the solid rock floor but also the disequilibrium of being without my father.

The longer we were on our own, the more I began to appreciate that rules were ineffective. When it came to survival, sometimes you had to throw out even the most well-intended yet prudent guidelines.

The closest town, Plains, Montana, was 5 miles away according to a green marker we found after walking on County Highway 28 for a few hundred yards. The road wasn't going to bring us east, just a little south and west, so I felt better about our plan. At least we weren't going to have to backtrack and waste a day of travel. Now I just had to hope that Plains was big enough to have a gas station with a convenience store so we could find a road map and hopefully some more supplies. Dr. Allyse had mentioned it as being the closest town with a hospital, so I thought our chances were good. It was too much to hope, however, that we'd find another tent at this point, but maybe we could at least find a tarp or something we could turn into a makeshift emergency shelter.

We traveled in silence until we made it to the tiny town of Plains, Montana, population 1,048. As we tromped into the town center, I hoped the current population was zero. We didn't find a roadside gas station, but we did find a U.S. Forest Service Ranger Station, which was like a big camp store. The Station was ransacked, picked clean of anything that looked remotely usable. The map section was picked over, too, but I spotted a larger map book and flipped it open to the Idaho page.

"So where are we going?" I asked Nora.

She bit on her lip and lowered her eyes to the page. "This isn't the map my father had."

"It's just made by a different company," I said, keeping the annoyance out of my tone. "The towns and roads are all the same, trust me."

She flicked her expressive eyes toward me. "I don't know if I can do this."

"Take your time," I said. My voice lowered of its own volition, to something that remotely sounded compassionate and encouraging. It sounded foreign to my ears.

"I can't figure this out with you breathing down my neck, Sam."

I nodded. "I'll go explore a little bit – see if there's not some things we can make use of here."

I grabbed a candy bar and ripped it from its wrapper. Nora curled her lip and winkled her nose. I ignored her disgust and bit off a mouthful of chocolate and peanut better. "What are you gonna do when all the healthy food is gone?" I posed to her.

In truth I would have killed for an apple. Who knew when and if I'd ever get fresh fruit again. "You suppose they have apples in Eden?" I asked.

"I don't know." She gave me a goofy, playful grin. "Just don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge if a snake starts talking to you."