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Regrettable Circumstances: Episode 3, Part 2

They spent the night in a hotel they found along the highway about half a mile outside of town. It was cold outside, and inside for that matter. As expected, there was no power or running water, and some of the rooms had been broken into and showed signs of armed struggles. Dried blood and spent bullet casings were everywhere on the cement outside a lot of the rooms. Leon and Keith found a room that hadn't been broken into, and after searching the office for several minutes were able to find a key for it. "Well, I'm hopin' to hell that the creeps don't find us here tonight." Said Leon. "Doesn't matter, it would be a bad idea for us to try to sleep out there in the cold. It's pretty cold in here, but it's even colder out there." Keith replied. Leon thought about it for a minute. "Well, I don't trust hotel bedsheets, I'm gonna go get my sleeping bag. You want somethin'?" "No, I'll be fine." Leon went out and got his sleeping bag from the side compartment on the bed of his truck, came back in, and laid down on the floor beside the bed. "You don't have to sleep on the floor." Said Keith. Leon lifted his head up and looked at him. "Where I come from, two men don't share the same bed." He said matter-of-factly. "Well, hate to break it to you Leon, but where you came from doesn't exist anymore. Not as you remember it anyway." Leon thought about this for a moment, then finally said, "To hell with this floor." He got up and laid down on the bed. "So, where do you come from anyway?" Asked Keith. "Well, I was born in Memphis. Memphis, Tennessee. I grew up in Chattanooga. Finally, when I hit eighteen I decided enough was enough and so I went to California, and that's where I been ever since." "California born and raised myself." "Yeah, I can tell." They laid in silence for a few minutes. "So, what was Tennessee like?" Leon thought about it and sighed. "Well, I didn't like it there, I can tell you that much. First off, everybody there's a bible thumper. I ain't got nothin' against God or anything, but those people just take it a little too far. And everybody around there is so full of themselves. I can't even count how many people I got into fights with. Like I said, enough was enough, I got outta there real fast as soon as I hit eighteen." Keith nodded. "Well, do you think this... stuff got there?" "I bet it did. I wish it didn't, but I bet it did." "Why do you wish it didn't, I thought you didn't like it there?" "Well, first off, if it didn't, then we could go there. Tennessee is way the hell better than this shit. Second off, my momma's there, bless her heart. I'd go out there just to get her, but I don't think I would find her." Leon sighed. "Well, I'm gonna try to get some rest, and you should do the same. The goin's gonna be rough tomorrow." And with that, they both went to sleep.

Leon woke up the next morning with Keith's arms wrapped around him. He decided to let him sleep for awhile longer, the day ahead may be rough and Keith would need his energy to make it through it. Just as Leon began wondering if he would wake up before mid-day, Keith's eyes opened lazily. "Mornin' sunshine. Sleep well?" Leon asked. Keith let go of him, looking slightly embarrassed and sat up. "Yeah, good enough. What time is it?" Leon took his pocket watch out of his pocket and opened it, frowning when he discovered the battery had died. He snapped it shut and said, "In Apocalypse Standard Time, it would be time for breakfast, and after that it's time to get." He sat up himself and took out a cigarette and lit it. Keith coaxed the pack out of Leon's hand and took one out for himself. Leon lit it for him and got up. He went out the door and came in with a can of bean soup in each hand. He opened them using the screwdriver-and-wrench technique and gave one to Keith. "Eat up, today's gonna be a long day of traveling." Keith ate the entire can and gave Leon the stained plastic spoon from the glove compartment. Leon ate, and it wasn't long before they were on the road again. "If you want, I'd be okay with going to Tennessee." "What the hell for!?" "Well, your family's there, aren't they?" "Well, they were there, but I bet I'd find nothing but disappointment." "You never know, someone might still be alive. The virus may not have even gone that far East yet." Leon sighed and thought about it, still headed North for the time being. Finally he smacked the steering wheel hard with the palm of his hand and shouted "Bah!" "What?" "Son of a bitch. You just had to go there. I'm turnin' this rig around, and we're probably gonna die on the road to nowhere because you had to open Pandora's Box." Keith was mildly surprised. "What did I say to change your mind so fast?" "Well, you brought to mind an image of my poor mother huddled in a corner, starving and fearing for her life, that's what you said to change my mind so fast." He turned the truck around and turned onto the first road he saw that was headed East.

They kept driving for the entire day, stopping only one time to fill the gas tank. By the time they quit driving, they were at the Idaho-Wyoming border. They were both exhausted from about twelve hours of driving, and decided to stop at a small shack they saw on the frontage road that went along the highway. "You know, I don't think it's a good idea to go too far from the truck around here. I mean, the highway's right over there." Keith pointed to the highway with wrecked cars blocking all of the lanes. "Besides, that shack looks filthy, cold, and like nobody has even been there for the last ten years." He finished. Leon replied right away. "Well, are we just gonna sleep in the truck, then?" "I guess we better." "Well, it sure won't be comfortable. Hell, it's barely comfortable for one to sleep in here. And it's gonna get colder'n hell in here too." "Not as cold as it would be in that shack. It doesn't even have a decent door." Leon thought about that. "Well, I guess if it gets too cold I could just start 'er up and put the heater on 'til it gets warm again." Leon got out and took the sleeping bag out of the compartment again. He came back up and put the sleeping bag between them and shut the door. Keith looked at it. "That's just one." "Yeah, it's just one. I only have one." "Well, what am I supposed to do?" "Cover up." "What about you?" Keith asked as he covered himself with the bag, now unzipped to be more like a thick blanket. "I'll manage." "No. I don't believe in being warm myself and letting someone else be cold. Scoot over here." Leon just did as he was asked without objecting. Keith put the cover over Leon too and leaned against him. "This way we're both warm and happy. Right?" Keith said. Leon hesitated, obviously feeling awkward. "Right." They stayed warm through the entire night.

Leon woke up and looked around. At first he thought he woke up in the middle of the night because the inside of the truck was dark. His eyes adjusted finally and he saw that the truck was buried in snow. He scooted out from under the sleeping bag and behind the wheel, turning the key to see how much gas was in the tank. The tank was beginning to run low, slightly under a half tank. Leon frowned and decided he didn't want to get out when he couldn't see what was outside. He tried the windshield wipers, but there was simply too much snow for them to get off. They went back and forth uselessly as they pushed the snow around on the windshield. He started the truck and began driving forward, and it took almost a minute for all of the snow to be off the windshield. The movement and the noise and vibration from the engine woke Keith. "What's going on?" He asked. "Well, decided to get back on the road. Must've been one hell of a snow storm. That snow's at least two feet deep. I can't even see where the damn road is." "Is that a very bad thing?" "No, not really now that it doesn't really matter whether you're on the road or not. Gonna have to stop somewhere pretty soon and fill these gas cans up again."

They had to stop along the side of the road somewhere in the Eastern half of Wyoming to put the last of the gas in the tank. It wasn't much longer before they came to a small town not more than half an hour's drive past Cheyenne. The town appeared to be deserted. They pulled into the only gas station in the small town and Leon turned the truck off. "Well, under all this snow I couldn't begin to guess where the valve would be." Said Leon. "We could try taking the pump itself apart." Said Keith. Leon considered this for a moment. "Okay, tell you what Keith, I'll get to work on that, and you look around for a push broom in case we end up needing to take it out of the valve." Keith went inside while Leon was digging through his tools, and by the time Leon began working on it Keith was already back outside with a snow shovel. It turned out that they wouldn't need the shovel after all. Leon got the pump disconnected from the concrete island it was on and pushed it over, revealing a small but workable hole to put the hose through. It took a minute to get a siphon going, and Leon had to redo it several times, but they were making good progress. That's when things got complicated. "Leon, we got some visitors." Keith said and pointed down the street. Leon looked only briefly to see that waves of zombies were coming out of the buildings and down the road towards them. "I can hold them off, Keith, you finish getting this gas pumped." Leon said as he took the M4 out of the cab and pulled the cocking lever. He quickly took several clips for it too. Leon had time to estimate how many zombies he had agreed to take on alone. The odds weren't particularly favorable. About thirty five zombies stumbled down the street towards them. Thankfully they were moving even slower than usual due to the cold. They weren't far from the gas station though. Leon leveled the gun on them and began firing into the mob.

This didn't have the effect that he had hoped. His aim was dead-on and it dropped a large number of them, but more began coming out of the houses and stores when they heard the gunshots. Thirty-five zombies turned into sixty in only a minute. "Keith! You're gonna have to work a little faster, things ain't goin' well over here at all!" He shouted back at Keith as he reloaded the gun, then continued firing. It didn't take much longer before Leon had to back up. The zombies were almost on top of them. Leon finally fought the zombies back about twenty feet before he could gain no more ground. Just about then he heard the engine to the Ford start, and Keith pulled the truck next to him. Leon took another several pot shots as he was opening the door. He got in and they got out of the town as quickly as they could.

"That one came close." Said Leon. "Yeah. I'm kinda wondering if it was worth the risk." Replied Keith. "Well, we can't continue without gasoline, and we had ought to get it every time we can. That time we could, maybe the next town would be worse and we woulda been shit outta luck then." "Okay... So where are we headed now?" "Now? Just keep goin' the way you're goin'. Map says that the freeway turns south at Omaha, but Omaha's a pretty big city so we might want to see if there's a way around it." Keith nodded his head and continued down the freeway. It was pretty clear, save for the occasional car buried under several feet of snow. "You ever driven in snow before, Keith?" Keith glanced at him and shook his head. "Well, you probably ought to slow down, if this truck gets wrecked out here and we get stranded, we are fucked, no two ways about it." Keith slowed down until he was doing no more than thirty miles per hour. They finally made it to the outskirts of Omaha, and they found the freeway going south by searching the back-roads. The freeway was packed with broken cars and a small number of the wandering undead so Keith drove alongside the freeway until it was clearer, then he got on it again. The sun had been down for almost an hour by the time they were within thirty miles of Columbia, and they were both tired. The landscape was nothing but white and darkness. Keith pulled over and shut off the engine. They both ate on the road, so they weren't hungry. They went almost right to sleep, repeating what they had done outside the shack in Idaho. It worked well once again.

By the time they reached the border of the state and passed into Missouri, the undead had entirely disappeared. They ended up pressing onwards to Kansas City before stopping for the night.

TO BE CONTINUED...