Natural Disaster

Chapter 10

The next morning came too soon for Launa’s taste. The sun rudely shone into her eyes, making her pupils constrict painfully. She groaned and rolled over in the reclining seat, putting her back to the window and pulling her knees up as best as she could. Rubbing her eyes against the pain, she heard the quiet, telltale snore that told her Avi was still asleep. Sure enough, when the pain in her eyeballs dissipated, she found him dead asleep, using his elbow as a pillow, jaw slack.

Poke him. Launa was taken aback by the childish urge that shot through her brain. What the fuck? No- why would I do that?

Poke his ‘stache. Just do it.

She wished she had been more awake to resist the peer pressure of her own mind, but, in her sleepy state- yeah, okay. Scooting forward ever-so-carefully, she reached out and gently poked under his nose, once, twice, and ran her finger over the hair, there, quickly retracting her hand when Avi screwed his face up and rubbed his nose. “Esther, stop.” He mumbled, groaning and rubbing a hand over his face.

Launa raised an eyebrow, feeling a ridiculous amount of annoyance ping through her as she watched him turn over onto his back, slowly waking up. Esther? Okay, stop, you’re being dumb.

He squinted over at her, obviously just as perturbed by the sun as she was. “Hey,” he greeted with a croak, then paused for a long while, “were you just poking me?”

"Um. No." She lied, fighting the evil grin that came to her face.

"Very rude." He said jokingly, pushing her in the shoulder before sitting up, readjusting the incline of his seat.

Launa didn’t move from her spot, chewing her lip as she debated whether or not to ask him who Esther was. Fuck it. “Who’s Esther?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant about it, but was, truthfully, intensely curious.

Avi almost jumped and frowned, confused, at her. “She’s my sister. I don’t remember saying anything about her, though. How did you know her name?”

She ignored the cool relief that settled in her stomach. Stop that. “When I poked you, you told her to stop,” she explained, grinning wide, “Does big sis pick on you, often?”

"Ah," he laughed a little, under his breath, "yeah. She and a friend of ours have a habit of doing that. Kind of annoying, if I have to be honest."

"Sorry."

"No, you’re fine," he assured her, before bending to get to the wires, hotwiring the car, again, "shall we?"

Launa nodded and readjusted her seat into an upright position. She didn’t want to be laying down if Avi decided to tear off over the highway, again. Which is exactly what he did. Though, she was a little less averse to it than she was, the first time.

______

After another couple of hours of driving over the rough terrain the disaster had created for them, they found themselves in a little town that they had not yet spotted on their map- Rock Point. They drove slowly down the main road- there wasn’t a lot to it, if she had to be honest. A lot of farming equipment that was, just like they had seen time and again, overturned by splits in the earth. What few buildings there were had collapsed in on themselves, and Launa shuddered. So far, it appeared as though the massive earthquake had spread across three states. Was it just this area? she wondered, Or was it the whole country?

Try the radio. Of course, why hadn’t she thought of that, earlier? She leaned forward as Avi maneuvered the truck around debris and wreckage, fiddling with the dials on the dashboard in an attempt to get a radio signal. All she received was static.