You decide that if you are going to expect the girls to trust you, you have to trust them as well. So you keep on walking. By the time the car is loaded up, the girls are both up and making breakfast.
"Good morning, ," they say in unison as you walk back in.
You eat more than usual, knowing that you will likely spend the day on the road. In the meantime you tell Britney and Erin about your plan.
"We pretty much have everything we need now," you say, "so there's little point staying here much longer. If we start out in the morning, we'll be able to make it deep into the rural areas by the night, even with the roads littered with abandoned vehicles."
"Maybe we should stay here," Britney says. "It's nice and safe. We've been here for days and we hardly even saw anyone. Maybe if we stay, we can get through this."
You shake your head. "No. Like Erin said there are definitely more survivers in the city. Sooner or later they will organize into bands and gangs and start combing the area, hunting for loot and smaller groups like us."
"OK," Britney says quietly. You hug her fragile frame.
"Don't worry. I know it's hard to leave a relatively safe place like this, but I promise you, we'll watch out for each other and get to the farmlands before dusk. There wouldn't be another human for tens of miles around and nobody will ever find us. We can forget this nightmare ever happened and live simple happy lives, like people did centuries ago." Erin joins you and her sister in an embrace and the three of you hug tightly, reassuringly.
You get into the SUV and head out. You have made a slight modification to the car, unscrewing the restriction bolt that kept the front passenger seat from reclining back fully. Now, said seat is fully reclined back, allowing you to stand up on it, towering over the car in this makeshift gunner's nest, as well as easily move to and from the back seat. Erin drives, Britney is told to watch the back, while you take up position in the nest with a rifle.
Time goes on. You make your way through the city, having encountered only a few skirmishes and blocked roads, and into the suburbs, which look completely deserted. For the last hour or so you haven't seen a single human. It is also here that you begin to comprehend the magnitude of destruction. It is one thing to see everything ruined within sight, but it's another to see that the destruction spreads for many kilometers - probably over 20,000 of them each way, rounding the equator.
Your legs are beginning to hurt and seeing the fruitlessness of standing where you are in this deserted suburban landscape you think about going back into the car, when you feel someone pull down your pants and play with your rapidly hardening dick. "Since Erin is driving, it's got to be Britney," you think. |