Chapter 15: Through the Co-op

The Wastes became a pitch-black void after the sun went down that night. Having reached the end of it's cycle, the moon was nothing more than a black circle floating in a starry desert sky. Eli's post-human trait allowed him to drive in the darkness without needing to use the roller's exterior lighting equipment, but, although his Sight changed the color of the blackened wasteland to light gray, it didn't make the broken road any less hazardous.

They left the brewery as soon as the sun completely set, thinking that if anyone else was on the road during the day, they'd have surely taken shelter by then. Julie had asked Eli to do the driving, well, more like insisted he do the driving, when they left. This was fine with him, though; he figured concentrating on avoiding hidden potholes and broken slabs of asphalt would be a good way to prevent his thoughts from focusing on the tragedy taking place in Lancaster. He figured wrong. Less than five minutes into their journey, and his mind was consumed with negative thoughts.

Fuck. Now that the immediate threat's gone, all I can think about is that mountain of corpses.....it was probably more than half the people in town....so many women and little girls, dead, mangled, charred... and so much blood....Fuck! Why did they have to kill so many people? The only combatants in Lancaster were the militia, for fuck's sake! 

Eli's grip on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles turned white. His anger over the slaughter of people he knew was rising to the surface, growing more intense the longer he let himself think about the things he'd seen, the thing's the JSU had done, and the things they would likely do from now on.

A hand was gently placed on his shoulder from behind. Looking in the mirror, his eyes met Julie's.

"I can tell what you're thinking about," she said, "But you should stop. There's nothing we can do about it, not right now anyway. Getting yourself worked up and angry won't do us any good, sweetheart."

"Yeah, you're right mom." He let out a sigh, releasing his tension with his breath. He lifted her hand from his shoulder and placed a kiss on her fingers before letting go. "So, do either of you know how to get to any western settlements?"

Vivi answered him from the passenger seat.

"I know the highway north of the one we're on leads to Mist Harbor, but it's about three hundred miles away. Lauren said it's past the edge of the Wastes, on the shores of a lake."

"Past the wastes?" Eli raised his eyebrows at the unexpected bit of information, "Shit. There's no way we can make it that far though. We could barely make it three hundred miles even if the car was fully charged.... Wait, Lauren actually talks to you? She's never talked to me...."

Vivi giggled at her brother's failure to befriend the long-eared trader from Mist Harbor.

"Don't take it personally, she doesn't talk to most people. Actually, she barely talks at all, and especially not to men. She hates men. She only talks to me because she wants to get in my pants, but I made it clear that I'm not interested, okay? I like men, not women, alright?" She said, a little too assertively.

"Mhm, so you say. How many men asked you to marry them last year? Five? Six? You're already nineteen, any other woman with that many offers would have been married with two children by your age. You sure you don't prefer women? It's cool if you do. You know I'll support you, whoever you love." Eli was only half teasing; he really had started to suspect Vivi might be into women recently.

"I just have high standards, okay? I'm not so desperate that I'd fuck any guy that asked me to marry him. Besides, I.....what about you? You get any women knocked up yet? I know you were really popular, my friends were always begging me to set them up with you." Vivi looked at Eli skeptically, turning to sit sideways in her seat, one leg folded underneath the other.

"Heh, no. I have pretty high standards too. I did recently start a relationship, though. I've been obsessed with her for years and we finally got together, but it's still new, so we haven't talked about marriage or children...." he grinned at Julie in the mirror, "....yet."

"Riiight..." Vivi said, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously, "Anyway, we can probably make it out of the wastes with the battery we have left. Lauren said there's an old building that her caravan stops at for the night when they travel, just off the highway in the transition between the Wastes and the Wilds. She'll probably do another trade run in a few days, so we can wait for her caravan to pass through, and warn them about what's happening in Lancaster."

"They might let us ride with them back to Mist Harbor, too." Julie added from the back seat. "Or they might even have a transfer cable to charge our roller enough so we can follow them back."

"That's a lot of 'might's...haaah." Eli sighed.

Dammit. I wish we had an emergency roll-up solar panel like the old man kept in his Bronco. It wouldn't do much, but at least we'd avoid having to rely on the kindness of strangers or march through the fucking desert.

Eli rubbed his jaw while deliberating the options they had, which seemed limited to either wandering aimlessly westward until their battery died and they were stranded, or waiting for Lauren's trading caravan and hoping their dwindling supplies held out until they arrived. There wasn't much to deliberate, really.

"Well, looks like Mist Harbor's our best bet. Shit, let's pray the battery holds out 'till we make it to the rest stop." Eli said, resigning himself to their hastily formed plan of action.

Turning off the main highway, Eli took a side route going north, toward the road that would carry them to the rest stop where they planned to spend the next few days. The narrow, winding country road cut through an area that was probably a small farming co-op three hundred years ago. Two-story farm houses were spread out on either side of the road, each one sitting beside a heavily rusted storage shed, a derelict barn, or a collapsing metal grain silo. One particularly beaten-down house had crumbled into itself, its feeble wooden walls no longer able to withstand the weight of its roof.

They followed the road uphill and around a sharp curve. Rounding the bend, a piercing cry shattered the silence. Eli jerked his head around to find the source and spotted a Feral stumbling off the front porch of a nearby farm house. It hit the sand and started running after them, with a handful more of the ugly fuckers coming out of the house after it.

Heh, good luck catching up, you rotting bastards. 

"Mom, pass Vivi the smokeball gun. I don't think we'll need it, but we should be prepared, just in case." He said, watching the Ferals lagging behind them in the sideview mirror.

Julie twisted around and bent over the seat to retrieve the smoke gun from it's case.

"Eli! Watch out!" Vivi yelled.

"Oh shit! Mom! Hold on!" He shouted to his his mother.

A herd of roaming Ferals, alerted by the sentinel's shrieking, had emerged from between the houses and barns ahead. A hundred, maybe more, corpses were sprinting at them from seemingly every direction. The largest group of them were blocking the road, running at them head-on, and closing in fast.

"Fuck!" Eli, deciding to avoid getting stuck in the crowd and possibly damaging their car, yanked the steering wheel to the right, going offroad.

They plowed through the red sand, ramming into a lone Feral who happened to be coming from that direction. It's knees crunched as they smashed against the iron grille guard, and it's face bounced off the hood, chipping the paint where it's rotten teeth scraped against it. The car shook when the Feral was sucked under the wheels, making a sickening crack when it's spine snapped as the weight of the roller pressed it into the sand.

"Smoke! Behind us!" He shouted at Vivi.

More Ferals rushed into the sides of their car, bouncing off and rolling in the dirt behind them. Eli sped toward a dilapidated barn in the barren field ahead of them, the huge swarm of enraged Ferals closing in from their left. 

Julie rushed forward with the gun, slapping it into her daughter's hands. Vivi immediately tucked it into her shoulder and threw open the roof hatch. She scrambled through the opening and spun around to aim at the feral crowd behind them. Eli drove by the decrepit old barn, getting close enough to its right side that he could reach out and touch its walls if his window was open. Halfway past the side of the wooden barn, Vivi fired a burst of smoke balls in an arc between them and the horde, then quickly clipped her belt to the safety hook beside her.

Dull thuds resounded from behind them, the sounds of sprinting bodies colliding with a wooden wall. A pile of writhing, screaming Ferals was forming near the corner of the building, their fallen pursuers tripping each other and dragging them to the ground in a cloud of red smoke.

Eli made a hard lefthand turn around the back of the barn, and the car slid around the corner because of the sandy terrain. As soon as they rounded the corner, Vivi fired off another volley of red smoke in their wake. She spun around to launch another smoke screen ahead of them, at the other end of the barn, but only two of three shots launched projectiles; they were out of smokeballs.

Fuck! I hope that's enough. We just need to get around the swarm, then we can outrun them on the highway.

They emerged from the partial smoke cloud as Vivi dropped to her seat, closing the hatch on her way down. Looking to his left, Eli saw a couple of stragglers still running down the road in the opposite direction, following the lead of the faster Ferals. He veered left, taking a wide turn to get back on the road. The rubber tires found traction on the pavement, and they quickly picked up speed.

The portion of Ferals that hadn't lost their trail were screaming again, prompting the others to change direction. Too little, too late. By the time the whole swarm was back on target, Eli had put a quarter mile of asphalt between them. The road was tilting uphill, making the already slow-running Ferals even slower in comparison to their wasteland cruiser.

Julie was on her knees in the back seat, looking out the rear window, watching the horde fall away in the distance. She let out a relieved sigh after they were far enough away to be considered clear of the threat.

"Nice work you two," she said, returning to her seat, "but we're out of smoke now, aren't we?"

"Yeah, we are. It would have been nice if someone had warned me the gun was almost empty." Vivi glared at Eli and passed the empty gun to Julie.

"Uh, sorry. It didn't come up, so I forgot to mention it." Eli said, smiling apologetically to Vivi.

"Right, anything else you 'forgot to mention' that I should know?" She asked, one eyebrow raised accusatorily.

"Umm..." Eli cocked his head to the side trying to remember if he'd forgotten to tell her anything else. "I don't think so."

"You sure? There's nothing else you should tell me?" She was leaning forward, closer to him.

"Nothing I can think of." Eli shrugged his shoulders.

".....fine. I'll drop it for now." She pouted and slumped back in her seat, folding her arms across her chest, unintentionally pushing her breasts up to display her tanned cleavage.

A few minutes of awkward silence later, they made it to the highway crossing. Eli made a lefthand turn, heading west once more. At the speed they were traveling, they could drive for another three hours before their battery died. Maybe three and a half if most of the driving was downhill. Whatever happens, by midday they'd either reach their destination or have to start walking.