Apartment 905 by Sahin, Ned (readnow .TXT) 📕

I will have the first watch. It is going to be a long night.

Chapter 17

It’s another sunny day with two cool friends in a doomsday beast, the Centaur. We have been driving eight hours non-stop, except for switching the driver twice. Kathleen is driving now. She had a hard time keeping the wheel still at first, but she seems comfortable controlling the beast now.

We are close to St. Louis. This is not the fastest route to San Francisco, but it seems to be the safest one. There are fewer population centers we have to go through on this route.

“Let’s take this exit, Kathleen,” I say. Every time the highway goes through a big city, we take an exit and use the side roads to avoid the city. Who knows what’s going on in city downtowns? If downtown Charlotte was invaded with Saviors, other downtowns might have faced a similar faith.

We were alarmed last night because of the noise we heard, but nothing happened afterward. It was probably a squirrel or rabbit. There was one of us awake at any time to watch monitors during the night. Nothing caught our attention. Certainly, we are not followed either. It’s easy to know it when there are no other vehicles on the highway.

We have been following a map we found in the command center drawer. It’s a full-scale United States map with only highways displayed on it. Every time we need to take a detour around the highway, we rely on road signs and our instinct.

With this speed, we should be in San Francisco after about four days.

Neighborhoods in Illinois are not any different than the ones we saw in Tennessee. They are deserted. Some buildings are burned down while some of them are still on fire. There are smelly garbage bags at every block. We see corpses with and without masks. I am not sure who had a less painful death. The people who died not being able to breathe because of the virus or the ones who died while fighting with others for food. What makes us sadder and angrier is to see police or military officers lying on the ground. Those heroes fought until their last breath to keep communities safe.

Some neighborhoods were invaded by animals. We got chased by an aggressive coyote family led by a bloody pack leader, but they didn’t stand a chance against our Armageddon truck. We hit one of them and drove away from the others.

“Matt, what time is it?” Kathleen asks with a smile. She is not asking the time because she has a date or anything else. The truck’s radio panel is showing the time right in front of her, anyway. She wants to remind us that she is tired of driving.

“It’s my time to drive,” I say. She yawns while searching for a place to pull over. I look back in the truck. Toshi is still sleeping in the living compartment.

“Let’s change before we get back on the highway. This little town looks good for a shortstop,” she says. Unlike the pre-pandemic world, I think stopping on highways is safer now. I consider her idea anyway.

I look at the businesses on the street. One of them is named Weldon Spring Grill. I imagine this restaurant at lunchtime before the virus. It must have been a meeting point for locals to catch up with each other and enjoy tasty grilled meat.

I miss getting together with friends at a bar to talk about TV shows and our travel plans over food and drinks. Who knows, once this nightmare is over, we may have a trip on this exact route and stop at this restaurant to refresh our memories.

“Sounds like a plan,” I say to Kathleen. The town looks quiet and safe.

While she pulls over, I continue to analyze the street. This town looks different than others. There are no garbage, dead bodies, or animals around. Store and restaurant windows are intact. Their doors are not broken. It looks like one of the first days of the outbreak when everyone stayed home under quarantine.

Maybe the second wave of the virus hasn’t hit this town yet. I heard about those isolated small communities that continued their happy lives because nobody was visiting their small town and carrying the virus with them unintentionally.

She stops in front of a bookstore. We both get off the truck.

“Welcome to the Weldon Spring, young friends!” an unmasked elderly man in his 70s says as he steps out of the bookstore with a wide smile. He has an old-fashion jean with Y-back suspenders going over his slim body. His beard is long, but it seems clean and freshly trimmed. As soon as I see him, I reach my gun holster. I can’t believe how careless we were. We didn’t see him coming.

“No need it... We are all friendly here,” he says, extending his arms on both sides like he wants to hug us.

I figure there are more people since he said we, but only an elderly woman comes out of the bookstore.

“Oh, new members for our book club!” she says, looking at us from the open door. Another elderly man with a noticeable sharp jaw appears behind her. They don’t have masks either.

“I am Harold Palmer. This young lady is my wife, Bernice. That old guy is our mayor, Burke.” Harold glances back at them with a sarcastic smile. They look polite and friendly, but alarms are still ringing in my head. Why don’t they wear masks? Why did they come out to talk to us without any weapons to protect themselves? They have a low chance of beating us in hand-to-hand combat. And why are they so nice?

They must have been bored in that bookstore reading books all day long.

I glance at Kathleen. She is staring at them with a smiley face. I think they reminded her of her own grandparents.

“We just gave a short