Page 14 of Last Light

ISLEEP BETTER THANI have in months. I wake up once or twice, barely orient myself to my surroundings, and then fall right back to sleep when I catch a whiff of Travis. I don’t wake up for real until I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“Layne. Layne. Time to wake up.”

I blink and snuffle and try to figure out what the hell is going on.

“It’s gettin’ to be light. We should get going.” Travis is still standing over my bed, but he’s withdrawn his hand from my bare shoulder.

“M’kay.” I make myself sit up, rubbing my face and smoothing down the flyaways that have escaped my braids. When I look outside, I see he’s right. The dingy light of sunrise is already breaking through the darkness. “I must have slept for ages.”

He makes a wordless sound that I take to be affirmation.

“Did you sleep?” I ask him. He’s got his shoes on, and he’s moved to the other side of the room to open a can of peaches with a pocketknife. He looks exactly the way he looked yesterday.

“Yeah. Some.” He uses his fingers to eat half the peaches in the can, and then he hands the rest to me.

I sigh since they aren’t very appetizing after throwing them up yesterday, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to waste food. I eat the peaches, and they actually taste okay.

Since he’s obviously not woken up in a talkative mood, I don’t try to chat. When I’m done, I put on my overshirt, belt, and shoes, and he moves the dresser away from the door. We collect our stuff, go downstairs, and pack up.

He takes longer going to the bathroom than I do, so I look at my map pages as I wait.

When Travis returns, he slides into the driver’s seat and leans over to look at them with me. “See a good route? Can’t get anywhere close to the interstates, and we’ll want to avoid here and here since those towns were pretty big.”

He doesn’t have to explain to me why we need to avoid the former interstates and cities. “I was thinking we just head straight through this way.” I run my finger along the map, following an old two-lane state road. “Wouldn’t that work? It will take us right through West Virginia.”

He analyzes the map another minute and nods. “Yep. Looks good. We’ll need to find more gas today, or we’ll have to ditch the Jeep. Be lookin’ for little towns that might not be looted.”

“Shit. It’s going to take us forever to get to Fort Knox, isn’t it?”

“Yep. But droves move even slower than us, as long as we can find gas.”

“All right. Well, let’s get going.”

***

THE DAY ENDS UP BEINGlong and kind of boring. We occasionally pass people, but most of them are walking, and the two times we see another vehicle approaching, Travis immediately drives us off the road as far he can get so we don’t encounter them. We have to stop in three different abandoned towns before we find a car in a garage with gas in the tank. Travis has a better siphon pump than me, so we use his to move the gas into our Jeep. In that same house, there’s no food or clothes, but I find a few bath towels and an unopened tube of toothpaste to add to our stash.

Other than that, we spend the day on the road, and Travis barely says anything at all.

I try—I really do try—not to get annoyed with him.

He doesn’t owe me anything. Certainly not conversation.

But still... Would it kill the man to chat a little or crack a smile?

We stop in the middle of the afternoon so we can pee and stretch our legs. Travis checks over the engine. It seems to be running fine to me, but maybe he fiddles around with engines simply to amuse himself.

I look at the map for the hundredth time that day.

“See anythin’?” he asks as he closes the hood and returns to the driver’s seat.

“Nothing new.” Sweat is dripping down my neck and into my cleavage. I pull my tank top away from my skin and try to fan myself with it.

Travis jerks his head to the side so abruptly I blink at him. Then I realize he probably got a good view beneath my shirt.

I’m not naturally a skinny person. Both my mom and my grandmother were short and curvy, and I probably would have been too if I had a healthy diet. I’ve gone years without getting enough calories, but I’ve still got decent boobs.

At least I’ve always thought so. Peter, the only boyfriend I’ve ever had, told me with a teasing smile that they made him want to pant and slobber.

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