We had to ditch the GPS straight away, as something was seriously wrong with the thing. In the space of five minutes it changed our location from Buffalo, to Dallas, to Waikiki. At one point it showed us driving through the North Atlantic ocean.
Luckily, Sierra is a good co-pilot. Unlike me, it doesn’t take her ages to find the right page in the road atlas, and she doesn’t have to twist her head and spin the map a lot to confirm we’re going in the right direction. She tells me she did loads of sailing as a kid. It’s surprising, but I’ll take it.
Darcy still hasn’t warmed up to her. He tends to groan whenever she talks and either huffs elaborately or rolls his eyes. He looks a lot like Mom, when she’s frustrated at Dad.
We drive through the outskirts of the city, it’s all industrial buildings, prefab houses and strip malls. Not exactly Buffalo at its best. We’ve decided to get onto the interstate in a few more miles and we’re hoping it will be clear. The accidents will be worse of course, with the higher speeds and all… But hopefully, the cars will have run off the roads before crashing.
It scares me, how quickly I’ve become accustomed to car accidents. We talk about them like we would traffic, or construction, or the weather. It’s a coping mechanism I guess. If we really stopped to think about it, it would be too overwhelming.
It probably makes me a terrible person.
“Ah, I knew it was out here somewhere. Turn in here, Evie.”
Score! Sierra has lead us to a strip mall containing a supermarket AND a camping store.
“Nice one! How did you know this was here?”
“My Grandma used to live out this way. I would come out on the weekends and help her with her shopping.”
“Where is she now?” I ask.
“She died last year,” Sierra says, “I miss her like crazy. She was awesome, we used to drink diet coke and read super trashy blogs together.”
“Your Gran was on the Internet?”
“Totally, she was on Instagram and everything. Why, isn’t yours?”
“No! She used to fax through my birthday cards though,” I say with a laugh, remembering Nanna’s scrawly handwriting. “But she died a couple of years ago. Cancer.”
“Oh, that sucks.”
“Yeah. I didn’t see her much, she lived in England — that’s where my Mom is from — but she was the best.”
I drive the car up and onto the sidewalk and park right next to the supermarket’s entrance.
Inside, it smells a bit, and it’s messy. It looks like we’re not the first people to pick the place over.
“Everyone, grab a shopping cart,” I instruct.
“Woohoo!” yells Darcy, as he kicks off down the candy aisle on a cart twice his size. I’m just about to tell him to slow down when I remember it doesn’t matter. I stand on the back of my cart and scoot off in a different direction.
Why is it that in disaster movies, they never stop for tampons? There’s always a scene like this, where the characters run through a grocery store or shopping mall, or they find an abandoned stash of Twinkie’s and there’s a montage of eating, laughing and euphoria.
Yes, I have every intention of stuffing my face with chocolate and drinking a gallon or two of soda. But first I want to make sure that for the remainder of the apocalypse (every 28 days), I am adequately supplied for all things menstruation.
I scoot my cart down the Female Sanitation aisle just as Sierra arrives from the opposite end. Apparently we have the same priorities.
We look at each other and laugh. Awkwardly.
Just as we pull the last box of overnights from the shelf, Darcy rounds the corner.
“Hey! What are you two doing down here? What are all those?”
Umm…
*
The camping store is way more fun than the supermarket. We go a little overboard with the survival stuff. Darcy insists we all get fishing rods and I even pick up a pair of binoculars.
We make an unanimous decision to upgrade our family tent, and pick out a really fancy, split dome thing: the Taj Mahal of outdoor accommodation. But I draw the line at a kayak, mainly because it won’t fit on the car with the luggage pod.
Sierra picks out some more ‘fashionable’ outdoor clothes and even grabs a pair of hiking boots. I have to admit, she’s catching on quickly.
With each of our carts piled high with groceries, sleeping bags, camping stoves, dehydrated food, more torches, chairs, swiss-army knives and cooking stuff, we head back to the car.
Again, Darcy insists on racing ahead. But he forgets our car is parked at the supermarket entrance, and goes for an identical SUV across the lot.
“Darcy, that’s not our car!”
Too late. He doesn’t hear me. He jumps inside onto the back seat and closes the door behind him.
As I’m about to laugh, the door opens again and he tumbles out, screaming.
I abandon my cart and run straight for him.
“Darcy, are you okay? What was it?”
He doesn’t reply. I pick him up. He’s shaking and crying.
Sierra jogs up to the car, peers in, and backs away, her hand over her mouth.
“There’s a baby,” she whispers, and sits down in a gutter, her head between her knees, her hands over her face.
I hold Darcy tighter. I guess we’re not growing accustomed after all.
*
The highway is quiet, both in the car and out. We’re well out of the city, it’s all fields, trees, and the occasional tired house.
As we expected, the majority of the cars ran off the road, so it’s almost clear and we’re making good time. But I’m getting an ulcer on the inside of my lip, I keep biting it as we pass cars smashed against trees and lying in ditches. I’m trying to keep a brave face for Darcy
He’s shaken up, badly. And I don’t know what to do. I tried playing Truth or Dare but he wouldn’t join in. I put ‘Yellow Submarine’ on the stereo and he yelled at me to turn it off.
Maybe I should stop trying to maintain a sense of normalcy for him and let him adjust to our new situation. It’s not what Rory would do, but it’s all I can think of.
My iPod shuffles on to my favorite Kings of Leon song. Sierra stops it before the vocals kick in.
“Hey!” I groan.
“Whatever Evie,” she says dismissively. It’s starting to become her catchphrase. “Okay, so like everyone sixteen and older is totally passed out.” She says this more like a statement than a question.
I confirm anyway, “Yeah, except for The Cuspers?”
“Cuspers?”
“The people like me who had just turned sixteen when it happened.”
“Ah, so the astrology theory is dead then?” she says with a smirk.
“Yes,” I laugh. “Despite what you might have read on Carrie’s Twitter account, we Taurus’s weren’t to blame.”
“Poor Carrie, she’s such a ditz. Anyway, do you know someone who has like, turned sixteen since it happened? Like if someone was fifteen the other day but has turned sixteen now?”
This is actually a good point. “No, I don’t. When’s your birthday?” I ask.
“Not until July,” she says, “but I’m sure this will be over by then.”
“I hope so.” I start thinking of the people in my class at school. “I can’t remember anyone else with a birthday in May,” I say, eventually.
“Neither can I… God I wish Facebook was still working,” Sierra groans.
“Mmm, me too. It’s a good theory though. There’s this science group and they think it has something to do with the aging gene.
“Like how?”
I think back to the article I read on USA Now. “I can’t remember the specifics, but it had something to do with DNA sequencing and looking for a mutation.”
“Sounds very C.S.I.”
BEEP-BEEP.
An alarm goes off on the dashboard.
Oh shit. Gas.
“We need to get fuel,” I tell the car, trying to sound calm. “You don’t happen to know how to syphon gas do you?” I ask Sierra hopefully.
She shakes her head. “I don’t think it would be like, a good idea to go near an accident right now anyway.”
She’s right, it’s the last thing Darcy needs to see. “Okay, so we go to a gas station?” I offer.
“I think I saw a sign for one earlier on,” she says. “We should be coming up to it soon.”
We drive for another few minutes, up and over a small hill and almost miss the exit to the gas station.
I slam on the breaks and turn down the road.
The station looks almost brand new. It’s massive, with a huge food court inside and dozens of fuel pumps.
I stop the car before we reach them.
“Hey, which side is the cap on?” I crane my neck out the window to check my side, Sierra does the same.
Darcy jumps out of the car and runs toward the entrance of the building. He’s got to stop doing that.
I get out of the car to call after him —
“Evie! Bus!” Jin screams.
I turn to Jin, he’s pointing to the eastern side of the building, where a big, gray bus is parked.
The large white letters on the side read:
ELM County Juvenile Detention Cente
Oh my god.
“DARCY!” I scream.
Too late. The automatic doors slide open and through them walks a tall, beefy guy with a scar across his face and a shaved head…
He’s wearing an orange jumpsuit.
And he’s carrying Darcy.