“It won’t go any faster than about forty miles-per-hour,” Tuck called out the window.
“It’s a miracle that it still runs at all,” Avian called back to him. “Let’s just pray that it will keep that pace.”
Tuck nodded, turning his attention back to the level ground before him. Those who traveled with us had grabbed their blankets out of the back of the truck and started arranging themselves to get more comfortable. It was cramped quarters but they used each other as pillows, everyone suddenly getting much closer to one another than they ever had before.
Avian sat at the front passenger side of the trailer, rifle ready at any moment. I sat in the opposite corner in the back, watching the landscape as it fell behind us. West lay at my right, his head resting against my thigh as he drifted off to sleep.
As far as I could tell, all the others were asleep before we even got to the road. It seemed a shame. To me, driving on a road was the first tie to normal life I had ever had.
It wasn’t perfectly smooth. After not being taken care of for so many years it had cracked and started to break down a bit. But in a way it felt like flying. I knew Tuck had said we weren’t going very fast but I had never moved this fast before. Legs could only carry me so fast, even my legs. The way the wind whipped my tied-back hair around my face was an experience I had never felt before. I closed my eyes for just a moment and imagined I could smell the ocean as well.
The only sound that met my ears was the wind around us, the grumble of the truck, and its tires rubbing the road. The truck’s one working headlight created a tunnel of light before us that made me slightly uneasy. It felt like a beacon jumping up into the sky, alerting our position.
I reminded myself that Fallen weren’t supposed to come out during the night.
Except for when they burned gardens.
It wasn’t long before we reached the outskirts of a small city. My nerves pitched as houses came into view. Tuck pulled off the road and continued through the fields. I saw the shadow of buildings that created the small city we had raided a few times before. We had only encountered a few Hunters there before but it was too dangerous to risk driving through the city. Even if it was night.
As we got to the outskirts we reconnected with the road and pulled into a gas station.
Tuck pulled up to one of the pumps and Avian jumped off the trailer, grabbing a hose and started punching a few buttons. Nothing happened. Avian started walking toward the back of the store, waving Tuck forward with the truck. I hopped off, jogging ahead to catch up with Avian. I kept my shotgun level to my eye, my finger on the trigger. I wasn’t going to be caught off guard if anything woke up.
“Here we go,” Avian whispered, a bit of a smile forming on his lips. He waved Tuck over to a pipe that rose up out of the ground. At the top it had some sort of hand pump and a hose that ran off the side of it.
I watched in fascination as Avian opened a small round cover on the side of the truck. Tuck shut it off and stepped out, walking the length of the truck back and forth to stretch his legs. Avian put one end of the hose in the hole in the side of the truck and started pumping.
“This is going to take a while,” Avian huffed as he worked the stiff joints. “Watch the perimeter.”
I nodded once and walked to the side of the store, checking to make sure it was clear. I snuck back around to the front of the store, still clear. My nerves tight, I crept up to the glass front door and peaked inside. It had been obviously raided and the shelves were mostly barren but it was empty. I still didn’t relax though.
I continued to pace the perimeter of the building the entire ten minutes or so that it took Avian to pump the truck full of gas. As he finished he asked me to wait with the truck while he ran inside to look for something. I didn’t like it but I wouldn’t leave them here asleep and defenseless.
Less than two minutes later Avian jogged back towards us, five blue bottles in his hands.
“What’s that?” I asked, eyeing it warily.
“It cleans the fuel,” he whispered as he set three of them in the back of the truck and set to pouring two of the bottles in with the gas. “I don’t know if any of it is still good, the fuel or the cleaner but I figure if we’ve got anything of a chance we’ve got to try it.”
I nodded. When Avian was finished, he set the empty bottles on the ground. He motioned for the three of us to get back inside. A few people stirred as the truck was started back up but they were asleep by the time we pulled back on the road and continued down it.
“We should be good for another three hundred miles or so,” Avian said quietly. “Depending on what kind of mileage this thing still gets. And if it keeps running.”
I nodded again, watching the darkness around us. It was frustrating that I couldn’t see anything. I took a little comfort in the fact that Avian could though. He kept looking through his night vision scope every few minutes.
West eased his head back up onto my thigh, a soft snore letting me know just how asleep he really was. I tried to ignore him, remembering what had happened earlier when we had just brushed shoulders. My vision was already black, I didn’t need my brain going black as well.
I watched Avian for a while. He had been so strong these last few days. He had now lost his entire family and was the only remaining human in his bloodline. His parents had been infected early on, Tye, his cousin but brother to us all, had fallen a few months ago, unwitting at Avian’s bidding. Sarah had been taken from him by natural causes. Now it was just him.
“Is it harder now?” I suddenly said quietly. My fingers felt for the wings around my throat. “To keep going now that they’re all gone? Now that you’ve lost all your family?”
Avian looked at me, a million words behind his eyes. “I still have you,” he said very quietly. “As long as you’re still around I’ve got something to keep fighting for. And them as well,” he said as he looked down at those sleeping around us. “They’re my family too.”
That swelling in my chest started up again. I both craved it and didn’t want it. It made me say stupid things.
“Are you in love with Victoria?”
Avian’s eyebrows knitted together as he looked at me. “What? Victoria?”
I could only nod. My face suddenly felt hot.
“Victoria is a smart woman and she is beautiful, but… Why would you think that?” I was surprised to see that Avian’s face looked almost hurt.
I suddenly wished I had never said anything. What had been the point of this conversation? “I just… I didn’t…” I couldn’t find words that wouldn’t make me want to jump off this trailer and hide myself in a hole in the ground.
“You’re jealous,” Avian said with dawning in his voice. A bit of a smile tugged on his lips and his eyes suddenly seemed to light up.
“Jealous,” I said, meaning to form it as a question. That was what Sarah had said I was feeling.
“It’s not a fun emotion, is it?” he said as his face grew more serious, though a tight lipped smile formed. As he said it, he glanced down at West.
“No, it’s not,” I said quietly, my eyes falling down to West’s sleeping form. “I haven’t been very fair, to either of you.”
“This is all new to you,” he said quietly. “I can’t judge you too harshly.”
“I’m going to figure this out,” I said, my words hardening my resolve. “I know I can’t keep going on like this. I will choose.”
Avian’s eyes lost their light. He gave a nod, his eyes dropping to the ground that fell away behind us.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be,” he said, glancing at me. “I know this shouldn’t work.”
“Don’t say that,” I suddenly said, more harshly than I meant to. “None of that other stuff matters. This is about you and me, not about age or social normality. Society is dead.”