Kyle’s heart raced, and he knew Victor’s was doing the same. Neither of them had thought to check the car for movement before breaking the window. Kyle thought Victor had already looked and the coast was clear. That was a lesson to both of them. Kyle reached through the window and unlocked the gas cap.
Kyle showed Victor how to siphon the gas. The boy learned quickly. The Sonata had almost a full tank. They managed to cap off the truck and fill the five-gallon jug. Kyle tied it with a bungee cord to the bed of the truck. Before they knew it, the two of them were both standing in front of the store’s entrance. They looked around the area for any movement. There was still nothing, just the same rustling of leaves from the storm that was definitely rolling in.
“Are you ready?” Kyle asked.
Victor nodded as they walked toward the store. Kyle went in first, his shotgun pointed forward. “Watch your step,” he said as he motioned toward the bodies on the ground. Victor walked into the store and lodged it open with a decent-sized rock. A light rain began to drizzle down from the sky as he walked in.
“It’s sprinkling,” Victor said.
“That’s what we fucking need right now, right?” Kyle replied. “Let’s just get what we can and get back on the road. We’ll need to cover a lot of ground before it starts pouring.”
Victor walked behind the counter. He took slow and careful steps. He didn’t want anything to jump out at him. Under the counter he found an iPod Touch. The battery was dead, but sitting on a display case was a car charger still in its package. He put the iPod and the charger into his pocket and searched for some more good stuff. He didn’t find anything useful.
Kyle walked down the snack aisle and began grabbing anything he could. “Victor,” he said. “Grab some of those bags so we can take this stuff.”
Victor walked toward Kyle with an open plastic bag in his hands. Kyle began to toss anything he could inside, mostly medicine and supplements. In a world that demanded they continue moving, they would burn hundreds of calories a day. Without the proper nutrition they would collapse in the middle of a battle and give in to the dead. He looked down, and sitting there were two cases of Dasani water. Kyle knelt down and picked up both cases like they weighed nothing. “Let’s go back to the truck,” he said.
They carefully walked out of the store and headed toward the truck. The storm kicked up a little bit, but it didn’t seem like much for them to worry about.
“This is good enough,” Kyle said. “Let’s get inside the truck and take off.”
Victor opened the passenger door and jumped inside. Kyle put the cases of bottled water on an open spot in the bed. He poked the plastic wrapping with his finger and took a few bottles out. He tossed one toward Victor when he got into the vehicle.
“Drink up,” he said. “You need to worry more about dehydration than starvation. Remember that.” Kyle took a bottle of medicine out of the bag and dropped a tablet into his water.
Victor looked at him questionably. “What was that?” he asked as Kyle threw the medicine bottle at him.
“It’s like a power supplement. It’s supposed to keep me alert and awake. Let’s hope it works.”
Victor opened the bottle, dropped a tablet into the water and drank its contents in a few gulps. The rain gradually increased as Kyle started the truck. The engine rubbed a little, but caught. He drove toward the street slowly and then turned right. Victor took the iPod Touch and the car charger out of his pocket. He opened the packaging and plugged the charger into an available socket.
“What do you have there?” Kyle asked, taking gulps from the water.
“I found this iPod. I started working so I could buy myself one. Now that the world is ending, I figured I might as well have this one,” Victor answered.
He waited a few minutes until the device turned on by itself.
“Do you know how to work that thing?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah, my cousin James had one. He’d let me borrow it from time to time.”
“What do you do with it?”
Victor looked at Kyle skeptically. “Really?” was all he said.
“Yeah. I’m a construction worker, a freaking welder; I work with hot metal all day. What do you want from me?”
“It plays music and does a bunch of other stuff too,” Victor answered, looking through the previous owner’s playlist. “They have a lot of good music on here. Mind if I put some on?”
“Go ahead,” Kyle answered. Victor seemed excited and Kyle didn’t want to get in the way of that.
Victor pushed “Play” on a song, and it started playing out of the device’s speakers. Metal wasn’t really Kyle’s music preference.
“Who is this?” Kyle asked.
“This is Fear Factory, the name of the song is ‘Replica,’” he said, then banged his head along with the music.
“This is pretty good,” Kyle lied as he began banging his head with the music as well.
The rain continued to fall all around them as they reached the end of town. They were now in the process of making the turn that would lead them back into town and toward Victor’s house. Kyle decided that if the rain stopped they would continue on the road until they reached Victor’s house. If the storm got worse, though, he’d stop for the day until the rain subsided.
Chapter Eleven
The rain did not quit; instead the storm grew to something that resembled a hurricane. It became hard for Kyle to see out of the window as rain pelted the glass. The windshield wipers were old, and they did nothing more than to make the situation worse; he was in desperate need of new gear.
“We’re going to have to stop until the rain calms down,” Kyle said as Victor turned down the iPod. “It’s getting harder to see anything outside. The freaking windshield keeps fogging up. It’s not safe for us to drive with so many Existing Dead and cars on the road.” He turned the defrosters on. “This might help a little.”
“Where are we going to stop?”
“I don’t know yet,” Kyle said, thinking. “I’ve never really been on this road; I just know it leads us out of town. Eventually we’ll connect onto a main highway and that will take us to the 15 freeway.”
The rain gradually got worse as they continued pushing forward through the storm. Kyle remembered that there was a high school not too far from where they were, but he quickly thought against going there. When the news broadcasters first reported the dead walking, they told people to head for their local schools. The gymnasiums were where a lot of people had been hiding. If even one infected person had gotten inside the high school, the place would certainly be swamped with Existing Dead by now.
There weren’t that many other public places to go. They would have a better chance just turning around and staying at the gas station. Kyle hated backtracking, but it looked like he was going to have to do it until they passed the perfect place to hide.
“There,” Kyle said, pointing. “We’re going to go in there ’til the rain stops.”
Victor tried to stare out of his window to see, but the fog and rain weren’t letting him. Kyle quickly turned right and headed for the building.