At Least I Had Her
1 month 22 days after

Taser. Check. MRE’s. Check. Water tablets. First aid kit. Knife. Flashlight radio charger. Flashlight radio charger. Where the fuck is that thirthy dollar solar powered flashlight radio charger? I hear my sister screaming my name from the tent, the same scream she’s had the last few months every time she wakes up from the same nightmare: my dad’s plane crashing. A 7 year old should not have to deal with this, let alone a 15 year old. I run my hands through my hair and almost want to gouge my eyes out but all I can think is, at least we are alive, unlike my dad with his body probably burned to a crisp in a tree somewhere, all blistered and wilting. I grab all the stuff and go back to the tent. Ah! There’s the stupid radio! I get over to my sister who is clenching on to one of our dad’s old watches while blanketed in my dad’s jacket. She looks at me with so much fear in her eyes that it almost scares me. She’s shivering like it’s below freezing or something, which admittedly, it is pretty cold in this abandoned gas station since we’re getting closer to winter in the middle of nowhere Michigan. All I can do is hold her like I have been and tell her that everything is going to be okay but she’s smart and knows that not everything is all sunshine and rainbows. It’s dark and bleak, like the sky outside.

“I’m sorry,” she says sniffling.

“For what?” I ask her.

“For being a little snot who cries all the time and kicks you in your sleep.”

I laugh because even though she is “a little snot”, she’s my “little snot”.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You’re 7, we’re orphans now, and you’re scared. It may not look like it but I’m scared too. Despite it all, I know that we have a destination to get to and I have to keep you safe. You’re the only family I have right now, so, I put up with you, and all of your snot,” I say while nudging her in her shoulder.

“You’re pretty cool you know. Super badass.” She giggles because she knows she just said a bad word and my dad, or even my mom, would never have allowed that in the house, but fuck it! We’re living off the land now bitches! We’re pretty lucky we found this gas station because since it is in the middle of nowhere, no one came back to it after the cities were under evacuation, but who would want to.

I get the tent set up super quick because after almost 3 weeks of practice and our dad taking us on so many camping trips in preparation for something like this, I’m quite the tent expert. I look outside our little force field at the shelves to see what we could possibly take. Doritos, Snickers, protein bars, anything. But by the looks of it, everything looks tainted by the smoke and we can’t risk it. Everything is ready based on what we already had. Food and water, sleeping bags, tools, but something is missing.

“Do you think we should grab more water, just in case we run out of what we have?” I say, thinking out loud.

“What if it got poisoned like everything else and makes us shrivel up like this,” Lexi says as she makes a face where she scrunches her nose and perses out her lips like she got lip injections. I laugh a little while also thinking back to the bodies we’ve seen along the way. But I also think she is right. We can’t risk it but I guess that’s what the water tablets are for; to filter chemicals as well as dirt, right?

“Fuck it. We need more water and we have the water tablets. Hopefully we’ll be fine.”

She looks at me with this stink face and says “Okay, but it’s your funeral.”

I roll my eyes.

“Alright. We have to keep moving,” I tell her. “Pack up your stuff. Mask on. Gloves. And do not” I say furiously “take those gloves or that mask off for ANYTHING, you hear me?”

“Yes,” she says scared but strong.

I just look at the fear in her face that she is masking with strength and reassurance and make a note that no matter what happens, as long as I take care of my sister and myself, we’ll be fine. I check her gas mask to make sure it’s secure and pull her sleeves over her wrist. I take a deep breath of fresh air before I put my mask on.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Ready,” she answers.

I pick up the air filter and stuff it in my bag before I tell it to turn off. As long as it’s on, it’ll keep a bubble of clean air around us. I pull Lexi closer to me so she’s within the bubbles perimeter. Next, I grab the forcefield box and put my thumb over the biometric scanner and it says “Tyler Woods has activated force field scan. How would you like to proceed?”

“Force field down” I say hesitantly.

“Force field down,” the robot says and I can see the smoke surround us almost immediately, hitting the air bubble. I pull my glove back over my thumb and pull my sleeve down over my wrist. We move over to the drink cooler and I grab some waters before we leave, surprised at how cool they still are, stuff them in my bag that has all the survival supplies, and get ready to turn off the air filter. I take another deep breath and I see Lexi take one too.

“Air filter” I say to activate it. It makes a beeping sound to assure that it is on. “Close.” The smoke pours in around us like a ghost doing its haunting.

I turn to Lexi and point and tap the side of my mask to make sure she turns her comms on. “Can you hear me?”

“Reading loud and clear, Lieutenant” she says as she raises her hand to her mask and salutes. She puts a big grin on her face and I smile back. I have no idea how she puts on such a brave face but I envy her. Ignorance is surely bliss.

We get to the open road which is just so eerily empty. The wind is blowing all the trash and debris everywhere, almost like a western movie with sand and tumbleweeds but the dirty rural area version. Everything just looks as if it is dying a slow and painful death. The grass is wilted, the paint on buildings is faded. Everything just looks...pale and everything sounds hushed. I see Lexi walk over to what used to be a plant, but it appears that it has been sucked dry. She touches it and almost immediately it crumbles in her hand. You would think she would be phased by the remembrance that the air is indeed poison and has ruined everything, but she wasn’t. She just sighed and moved on. I get the compass out of my pocket and move around making sure we’re still headed north. We heard over the radio a few weeks ago after all the tv stations went out, that Canada is taking in refugees due to the crisis our country is going through. I don’t even really know what’s going on or why or who, all I know is that we couldn’t just stay in our house forever. A month was too long. We had to move. I never realized how much I wished I listened more to what my dad would say about disasters. I took it all for granted. He shouldn’t have left. Why did he leave? He knew something was going to go down. I think back to what he said before he dropped me off at school and how the last thing he said to me was “I love you, son” over the goddamn phone. He knew something, but left anyway. Why did he have to leave me in charge? I should be a sophomore right now so I’m old enough to keep us alive but I can’t even legally drive yet! Who’s going to teach me? Life, just like mom used to say, is truly a bitch.

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