O Brave New World - Chapter VIII

“Do you have a map?”

We had stopped the truck and were sitting still within it, parked on the highway overlooking a large urban area. I told my companion the grave news; the only map I had was one of Illinois. He did not seem bothered by my answer, however, and checked the pockets of his door to find a map. I, instead, opened the glove box. And there it was.

“Well **** on a stick, aren’t we just lucky.”

It was a map of Michigan. I hastily opened it and sprawled it across the dashboard, covering up much of the windshield. My companion focused his attention to the point on the map where Detroit was outlined. On the reverse side was, thankfully, a close up of the urban area around Detroit.

“****. According to this, we’re still at least 40 miles from Detroit. That’s a whole lot of city we still have to drive through, and I’m bettin’ that we’re gonna find a lot of **** on the road.”

We started to hear tiny taps on the hood of our car. Instinctively we both went for our weapons, pulling the map down and our weapons up, but we perceived it as rain a moment later. It was a curious moment. To forget what the sound of rain sounds like within a vehicle. In these days we were surely expecting some darker nature to the matter.

The rain began to pick up. My companion looked at the map again and then out through the windshield. He was contemplating. Contemplating whether it was worth the risk to drive our loud vehicle through an urban area. Contemplating other alternatives. No, he would not choose to go by foot. Even if the radio message said the military would not be there within a few days, it was still not smart at all to risk going by foot in a heavily populated area. And so he folded his half of the map and pushed it towards me and turned the keys. I buckled my seatbelt. So did he.

And so we drove on. Pushed forward through the storm. At first we were just passing by a lot of urban housing, but it was still dangerous enough. Even with the divided highway we were on, many yards away from the urban area, we were still taking a large risk. There could have been hundreds—no, thousands just waiting for us in those neighborhoods. All it would have taken was for the sound of our vehicle to carry to their ears. But alas the rain may have saved us from that, especially as it now began to pour down from the heavens in a heavy deluge. The pounding of the rain on the roof of the car drowned out the motor.

Of course, the trouble to this is that we were losing visibility on a highway that was beginning to clutter up fast. Many more cars were now on the side of the road; some were overturned, others had crashed into the divider. But we drove on. Even though we could not see but fifty feet in front of us, we continued on. My companion began to hum a tune. I was unsure as to what tune it was, but I did not want to ask either. The suspension was refraining me from doing so.

Soon afterwards the urban setting was letting up. It was becoming less congested. We passed a body of water before returning to the congestion, however, and the obstacles on the road only continued to become more frequent. We came to where the highway forked, but we still continued our way on it and not on the state road route. I looked out of my companion’s driver-side window; I could barely make out a small airport in the thick of the rain.

After that it started to become less congested in urban areas, but the traffic picked up. We were now actively dodging vehicles, slowing our speed, coming to some near hits, before we happened upon the worst of it—dead-on stop traffic, full to the brim of the road. My companion slammed on the brakes—too hard, unfortunately, and we water planed into a small car in front of us.

The collision was minor. Our airbags were not deployed and we were not hurt. But the real damage had been done. The car in front of us was now screeching in pain, lights flashing on and off, echoing a noise that carried over the rain. It had awakened from its slumber in pain. It would attract unwanted attention. And soon we heard the uncertainty of doom. The damned were hiding in many of the vehicles and were now climbing out of them.