And it’s true. We’ve been driving around the back roads all day. Going on an interstate at eighty miles per hour, it only takes about sixty minutes to get through the Grapevine. It’s taken us twelve hours to even get close, because many of the roads we’ve used have been dead ends and we’ve had to backtrack.
“Cassie…”
“It’s insane for us to waste gas driving around in the dark!” I exclaim. “None of my maps have any information about these roads. We need to wait until morning and figure out what’s going on. I can’t even see the North Star, for crying out loud! I have no idea what direction we’re headed.”
Rainclouds have darkened the sky, obscuring the moon and stars. It’s getting colder and windier by the minute. The entire windshield is coated with sleet. The climate control system in the Mustang broke about four months ago, and thanks to my brilliant habit of procrastination, I never got it fixed. Now I have no heater.
Lovely.
“I don’t want the engine to get frozen,” Chris mutters. “A car this old might have trouble starting up again.”
“I’d rather take that chance and not drive off a cliff in our sleep,” I say.
Chris nods.
“Okay,” he replies. “We’ll stop and rest for a couple of hours. If it’s a full blown winter storm we’ll want to keep moving, though.”
He’s right, of course. Mudslides are pretty common up in the Grapevine during storms. So is flooding and icy roads. It’s not like my Mustang is tricked out for that kind of crazy terrain, so it’d be safer not to push it.
Chris finds a type of hidey-hole off the road, wedged between a wall of bushes and trees. He cuts the engine, plunging us into total darkness. I instinctively check all the locks on the car before reaching for my backpack.
“It couldn’t get any colder, could it?” I mumble. “Stupid weather. Stupid EMP. Stupid crowbar.”
I dig through my pack in the dark. I finally find what I’m looking for, a wool camping blanket. I unroll it and spread it over my body. “Cold?” I ask, offering a corner up to Chris.
He shakes his head, instead shrugging on his leather jacket. Even in the dim lighting I could easily imagine him as a sexy greaser from the 50s. His hair might be a little long, but still…
“How’s your arm?” I ask, feeling guilty all of the sudden for not asking about it since I wrapped it up yesterday.
“Fine,” he shrugs.
“I should check it to make sure it’s not infected.”
“It’s not infected, Cassie,” he grins. “Go to sleep. You’re going to need it.”
I don’t argue. I just yawn and curl up, leaning my head against the window. The temperature is continuing to drop. I just hope I don’t wake up with an icicle on my nose. How embarrassing would that be?
The two of us doze off for a while. I glance at the crank radio to check the time, noting that it’s only midnight. We’ve been asleep for three hours. I glance over at Chris, surprised to find him asleep sitting upright against the seat. He looks a lot more relaxed that way. More chill.
I realize that my hands are so cold that they’ve gone numb. It hurts to flex my fingers. Alarmed, I pull my blanket tighter around my shoulders and lean across the seat. I brush my fingers lightly against Chris’s cheek. He snaps awake and grabs my wrist, pinning it against the dashboard. For a split second I can see the pure instinct in his reaction right before he seems to remember where he is and what he’s doing.
“What time is it?” he asks, dropping my wrist.
I can’t help but notice that his hands are warm.
“Midnight,” I say, my teeth chattering. “It’s freaking cold up here.”
“It’s only going to get colder,” Chris replies, turning the key in the ignition. It takes the car a few turns to rumble to life. “You okay?”
I can’t seem to stop shivering and my head has started to pound.
“Headache,” I mumble.
Chris frowns and touches my forehead.
“You don’t have a fever,” he says.
“I’m not sick,” I answer. “I’m tense. The world just ended, remember?”
He flashes an amused smile as we back out of the bushes, back onto the road. It becomes concerning to me that all of the windows are covered in a fine layer of snow. The road is ghostly white. It’s so thin that it’s almost like paper, which means the roads will be slippery.
“Great,” I complain. “Snow. Fantastic.”
“What did snow ever do to you?”
“It made me cold.” I tuck my legs underneath myself, feeling like a popsicle. “Aren’t you cold?”
“It’s just a little snow.”
“Let me guess. You’ve probably walked uphill, barefoot for forty miles in the snow as a Navy Seal. You’re now impervious to cold weather.”
Chris releases a rich, pleasant laugh.
“That would have been a cakewalk compared to what I had to do,” he says.
“And what did you do?” I ask.
“You don’t want to know.”
“No, I do.” I cup my hand around my ear. “I’m waiting.”
He smirks.
“I trained in San Diego at the Coronado Naval Air Station when I was eighteen. Two hundred boys go in and forty get to go onto the next level of training.”
“What are they, prejudiced or something?” I quip.
“Only the best get in,” he says, and I can tell by the way he’s smiling that he’s proud of his job.
“Have you been overseas?” I ask.
“Many times.”
“Where?” I lean forward. “I always wanted to travel.”
Chris sighs.
“I didn’t exactly have time to do a lot of sightseeing,” he says. “I’ve been on six tours since my first deployment. Iraq and Afghanistan for the most part.” His face darkens. “That was a couple years ago, though.”
“That explains your hippie hair,” I remark.
“Hey, I like my hair.”
“So do I, I’m just saying.”
Chris smiles again and I realize how much I like seeing him do so. I play a game with myself to keep my mind off the world’s seeming doom by seeing how many times I can make him smile or laugh. I manage to get him about five times in forty-five minutes. Not bad.
“It’s so cold,” I complain for the hundredth time. “Damn.”
Chris laughs — weird, because I wasn’t even trying to get him to do it.
“What’s so funny?” I demand.
“You haven’t been in snow much, have you?” he asks, rolling his eyes.
“No,” I huff. “Now I know why. It sucks.”
“Nah. It’s just different than what you’re used to.” He shrugs. “Then again, you are a city girl.”
I mutter something about him about being egotistical before rubbing my hands together. My head hurts sobad. It’s ridiculous. I grit my teeth and wrap my fingers around the roots of my hair at the crown. I pull on the hair enough to ease the pain in my head — a little trick I learned from those stupid online health forums on the Internet.
The Internet.Now a thing of the past.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asks again.
“My head hurts,” I say, admitting it. “I think I have some pain meds in my backpack.” The headache is so painful that it hurts to blink. By the time I rifle through all the survival crap in my bag I am tearing the pain medication package open like someone possessed.
“Aren’t those children’s painkillers?” Chris remarks, seeing the happy face on the label.
“Yes,” I groan, chewing up the grape-flavored drug.
“Why not just buy the adult doses? It’s more effective.”
“I prefer the grape flavor.”
He cocks an eyebrow.
“Fine,” I admit. “I like the happy face on the label. Geez.”