As Cameron continued to whine, Maya ignored her and opened the passenger side door to pull out her bag. She threw it over her shoulder, then grabbed Cameron’s pack and handbag, tossing both over to the other woman. She caught the handbag, but the other bag fell at her feet.
“What are you doing?”
Maya rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”
“We’re gonna walk?”
“Well, I don’t think AAA is going to come out here and save us. So, yeah, we’re walking.”
“Do you know how far that is?”
Maya stuck out her arms and tilted her head as she glared at Cameron. “I don’t. But what does it matter? We don’t have any other choice.”
Maya slammed the door and started off down the highway. Cameron cursed before picking up her own bag and running after Maya. She came up beside her, adjusting the backpack on her shoulders.
They walked down the shoulder of the rural highway for several minutes without speaking to one another. Maya looked around, feeling an odd peacefulness enveloping her. The birds sang, and she could hear them without the din of city life or the rumble of an 18-wheeler shaking the ground. The breeze felt gentle on her face and the sun warmed it. In any other circumstances, she would have enjoyed this walk.
But this wasn’t a Sunday morning stroll. Maya kept thinking about her kids. She felt so close, yet so far away from them. If only Gerald’s damn truck hadn’t broken down. Thinking of her ex-husband shifted Maya’s thoughts to Reno. He’d been proof that there were still good people left in the world. He’d stuck with her through the early days of this madness, but when he’d realized he was a liability, he’d told her to go on without him. She’d hated leaving him behind, and hoped he’d survived the explosion inside of the dome.
“You’re right. He’s an asshole.”
The words shook Maya from her thoughts. She turned to face Cameron. “Why didn’t he take you with him?”
Cameron’s eyes filled with tears. She wiped her face with her forearm, then looked over at Maya.
“I don’t know. But when we get there, I’m going to demand an answer from him.”
Maya nodded and Cameron sniffled. She couldn’t ever imagine being friends with someone like her, but given the circumstances, Maya realized they probably needed each other to survive.
They’d been walking for several miles when a boom echoed in the distance. Maya turned to face the noise, watching the tops of trees swaying in what had just a moment before been perfectly calm air.
The ship appeared first as a black dot, and Maya thought it was a hawk or a large crow. But the noise intensified, and the inky blackness of the ship tore through the blue sky. It had wings like a fighter jet but had to be twice as big as a 747. The nose of the alien craft turned.
It was coming toward them.
Cameron stared at the ship, her mouth open. Maya grabbed her by the arm and pulled her off the road. She stumbled as Maya led them off the gravel shoulder and into the nearby trees, where they ran several yards into the woods and came to a large rock with an overhang that jutted out far enough that they’d be able to hide beneath it. Maya threw her bag down beneath the overhang and slid inside.
“Hurry, Cameron.”
The woman tossed her bags to Maya and then slid in next to her. Maya could smell her shampoo—and the fear coming off the woman.
“W-was that…”
Maya put her hands on her ears as the ship passed above them, emitting a cyclonic howl so loud that Maya couldn’t understand what Cameron was saying or hear her even when she appeared to be screaming.
When the noise subsided, Maya took her hands off her ears and looked back at Cameron. The woman sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, her entire body shaking. Maya wrapped her arms around her.
“We’re okay. I don’t think it saw us.”
Cameron’s lips quivered, her body shaking. She looked up at Maya.
“We’re okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. We need to get going if we have any hope of staying alive.”
“No.” Cameron sat up. “We need to stay here. It’s too dangerous out there.”
“And do what? We have no food, no water, no supplies.”
“I don’t want to go back out there.”
“We have to. The longer we wait here, the more likely it’ll be that one of those ships finds us.”
Finally, Cameron nodded, uncoiling herself to slide out from the rocks, and then standing up. She grabbed her bag and walked toward the road, saying nothing.
Maya wanted to say something else to comfort the woman, but she decided against it. Cameron would have to learn the hard realities of this new world just as Maya had.
For now, they just needed to keep walking.
21
The mid-afternoon sun beat down on the women and the highway opened up, now devoid of abandoned or burnt out vehicles. Only a few cars had passed, and none had stopped even though Cameron had tried waving them down. One of the vehicles had been a tow truck with two men wearing gray mechanics shirts and baseball caps. Maya wondered how bad things must have gotten if blue-collar guys like that wouldn’t even slow down for two attractive hitchhikers. For the next half hour, not a single vehicle passed them. They’d come across two intact cars on the right shoulder, but the first had been out of gas and the second, a couple of miles further down the road, had refused to start when Maya had tried it, even with the key in the ignition.
They kept walking, Maya leading Cameron and neither of them speaking. The sun baked the asphalt to the consistency of warm brownies which sucked at their heels with every step. The air shimmied in the distance, heat pooling like floating water. A quarter-mile ahead, Maya spotted a steady incline. Her calves ached already, and she could feel the raw rub of blisters on her feet. The last thing she wanted to do was walk up that hill, but she’d power through it if that’s what she had to do.
But Cameron was another story.
The woman walked with her head down, dragging her feet along and wobbling from one leg to the other. She let her arms dangle, and her hair covered her face as she stared at the road while she walked. Cameron hadn’t said three words since they’d started walking again after the near-miss with the alien ship.
“How much did you know?” Maya asked.
Cameron looked up and swatted a tangle of hair aside, the bags under her eyes a charcoal smudge. “What?”
“About the invasion. The way you looked at that ship back there, it was like you hadn’t seen one anywhere.”
“I wasn’t exactly looking to grab a selfie with one.”
“Not on television, or outside your house?”
“If one had come over our house, I don’t think the house would have been there anymore.”
Good point.
“And as far as the television, Gerald’s too damn cheap to have cable. And our piece of shit antenna wasn’t picking up much of a signal beyond a couple of snowy channels. After Gerald left, I basically curled up in my bedroom. I didn’t even want to walk outside.”
Maya nodded.
“It didn’t seem to faze you too much.” Cameron had picked up her pace, matching Maya stride for stride as the conversation distracted them both from the beginning rise in elevation.
“Yeah, well, in my line of work, you have to learn how to keep your cool and make sure your head is clear. People’s lives are on the line.”
“I don’t know how you do it. Some asshole pinches my ass after I deliver a pitcher of watered-down beer to his table, and I wanna claw his eyes out.”
Maya laughed, imagining some drunkard getting smacked around by this scrawny woman. Cameron laughed along with her after a moment, shaking her head and staring back to the horizon.