Okay, I have to admit that riding in a car like this is an experience I would repeat a lot sooner than a roller coaster. Ditzy navigates the empty streets of Chesnet with occasional revs that echo like thunderclaps and make me feel powerful even though I'm only in the passenger seat. If there are any survivors left here that we haven't found yet, they'll hear us now.

Calico J keeps a close eye on the rear-view mirrors. Ever since he lost the vote to go find our families, he's been the most adamant about finding survivors instead, even after the first one went a little crazy and tried to blame us for Red Thursday. We avoided a few more crackpots with better screening protocols. You don't think about it until something like Red Thursday happens, but the kinds of people who can go weeks without hearing or saying their names aren't generally the kinds of people you want to socialize with in a post-apocalyptic survival situation.

That didn't stop Calico J from checking up on some of them later and only telling me about it after he got back. I've left him to it. It keeps him busy, and they've all turned out weirder or Sleeping on second pass anyway. The first person we found who we actually wanted to stick with was Ditzy, and she found us. The second was Patrick, but those were seriously off-track circumstances.

The road begins to rise. There's only one road over the Baycord river on this side of Chesnet, and I glance in the rearview to see Patrick look away from the window and down into his lap as we hit the bridge. It soars upward. The view from here is spectacular: no building in Chesnet rises above the four-story university on the far north side of town, and most don't rise above three. The bridge is more than that. Under a brilliant fall sun, the town stretches out beneath us like a photograph. Abandoned cars wink along the edges of perfectly quiet, leaf-strewn streets. Roofs bathe in the sunlight, and bright splashes of colour mark the trees along richer avenues. Fall is beautiful here.

The university campus is especially spectacular. The sight of it gives me chills, but from a distance, it's still a pool of yellow, orange and red that sits fuzzily on the other side of town and brings back memories of the forests I spent my last summer in before I moved across the country for school. I like forests. They're quiet but alive, always packed with interesting and beautiful things. They're the opposite of a classroom where a teacher just sits at the front and talks until my head swims from trying to follow. Half my high school teachers didn't even write on the board while they talked. It's so much easier when they do.

There's a shuffle in the back seat. I glance back again to see Calico J put an arm around Patrick, who leans in and hides his face in J's shoulder. We're at the height of the bridge now. I can see Chesnet's second bridge some ways downriver, close to the water on its bed of concrete piles, looking a lot like a concrete centipede. Ditzy has said that bridge goes under every spring when ice floes clog the river, a situation that probably led to the construction of this one. We've avoided both over the last three weeks, for Patrick's sake.

That's a day I won't forget anytime soon. It was just the other three of us at the time, and we were down by the river when someone screamed. We all ran to the bank just in time to see something hit the water. There was a figure on the bridge overhead... a figure who I swear to this day locked eyes with me as we all skidded up at the edge of the water. I remember it smiling. Then Calico J shouted that the splash had been a person.

The Baycord river is over six hundred feet wide where that lower bridge spans it. The splash was halfway out. Both my companions froze, and I still remember their faces, panicked and desperate, looking at me. I knew Calico J couldn't swim. I didn't know about Ditzy. I didn't know if someone had just pushed a Sleeper off the bridge, or a living, conscious human being. They hadn't surfaced yet. Until they did, already fifty feet downstream and obviously drowning. I didn't think twice.

I found Patrick underwater half a mile downriver, already gone limp, and dragged him to shore. He shouldn't have survived. Not without my breaking all his ribs on proper CPR. And not with what I saw at the bottom of that river when I finally caught up to him. But we turned him over on the bank, and he threw up enough water to drown a fish, then coughed and sobbed for close to an hour. Completely incoherent. When we looked back at the bridge, the other person was gone.

Calico J picked his nickname. Well, Calico J said all Patrick's luck must have come back for him on that day, and Patrick was the first name I could think of associated with anything lucky. It was meant to be temporary, but Patrick didn't question it. He didn't question much of anything. It was two more days before he said a word, and nobody could touch him without him leaping like he'd been shot. I think Calico J was happy to have another guy in the group, though, because he stepped in right away, and Patrick kind of glommed onto him. He's been with us ever since.

This is the first time we've been on a bridge since that day. We cross it in unusual silence, which continues as the university campus opens up around us. It's architecturally beautiful, tastefully forested, and unnaturally serene if you can ignore the dozens of bodies scattered over its lawns. Sleepers. Only Ditzy seems desensitized. She drives straight through, eyes sharp for obstacles, dodging any bodies on the road without batting an eye.

Then we're past, and the road opens up again. The atmosphere in the vehicle lightens. Ditzy digs a pair of glamorous shades from the glove compartment, then rolls down all the windows so the wind whips our hair. In another two minutes, we're taking the last intersection out of town and onto the highway. Ditzy shuts the windows again. I see what's coming the moment before she floors the gas pedal, and our screams and whoops fill the car. We have the road to ourselves. Calico J finds a saved song on his phone to blast in place of the radio, and we all sing along. I grip my seat and grin like an idiot. Everyone else's excitement is contagious.

After peaking at ninety miles an hour, Ditzy slows to a normal-fast highway speed so we can reopen the windows. By the end of an hour, we're all belting out our own renditions of popular songs we know even half the lyrics to. Calico J plays them on his phone when he has them saved. Someone breaks out snacks. It's a six-hour ride to Plyster-Anport county, but the first two hours fly by like nothing more than a joyride. After a quick break for lunch and a bathroom stop, we switch drivers, pile back into the car, and embark on the second leg of the journey.

This half is quieter. Some of that is because our throats are sore from howling, but there's a certain quiet to the road that weighs down like an invisible gravity blanket the longer we drive. We haven't passed a single moving vehicle. We've hardly passed an abandoned one, though they exist: I've spotted six so far, all of them gone off the side of the road after their owners fell to the Redding's curse while calling a loved one or emergency services.

Right around the four-hour mark, we pass a bigger accident scene. A car went over and burned at the side of the road. Dozens more are parked on either side, their occupants slumped over their steering wheels or collapsed just outside. At least half a dozen lie on the ground near the burned-out vehicle itself. I can picture each successive, unsuspecting driver pulling up behind the line of pulled-over vehicles, exploring the scene in horror, maybe even calling back to their loved ones. Then calling emergency services. They all went down. I slow as we drive past. There's no traffic to hold up as we survey the scene grimly, then speed up again without a word. You don't survive the apocalypse by dwelling on these scenes.

We make another, longer stop when the anxiety of the crash and the bridge catches up with Patrick, and he falls into a panic attack. I pull over. I think the car is a trigger, because Calico J pulls Patrick outside and sits him down in the grass there, facing the forest, like they've done this before. I join them. Nobody says anything, but even after Patrick recovers, we stay there for a while.

The sun begins to set over the trees. We've been driving through forest since leaving Chesnet, punctuated by tiny towns nestled in the backwoods that blanket this part of the state. Ditzy and Calico J both prove reluctant to get back in the vehicle. I'm sure they're both tired of being cooped up; Ditzy's fingers tap the steering wheel incessantly for the last two hours, and Calico J shifts one knee sideways so he can thump it without hitting the back of my chair. I can't blame them. I've got a crick in my neck from staring out the window, and the ache where my neck meets my spine returns. Patrick falls asleep with his head against the window.

It's Ditzy who breaks the silence. "Are we planning on meeting these other people yet tonight?"

The question isn't directed at anyone in particular, so I glance over my shoulder. Calico J just raises an eyebrow back at me.

"Where did they tell us to meet, again?" says Ditzy, slowing the car.

Calico J pulls out his phone, but the battery is dead.

"On highway six just north of Wakewater," I say. "This is highway six, right?"

Ditzy nods.

"How far are we from Wakewater?"

"About an hour."

"I say we stop." I lean over to check the long-invisible sun, which is throwing colours across the sky like it only does when it's close to the horizon. "I don't really want to meet with strangers in the dark, and I'm getting hungry. I'd rather eat and sleep before we arrive, then meet them in the morning."

There's a collective nodding.

"Start looking out for a town or something, then," says Calico J. "Unless we feel like camping out in the car, which I don't."

"There's a motel coming up soon," says Ditzy. "We can stop there if it's safe."

We agree to that, then fall back on Ditzy's memory as dusk falls over the road. With no electricity and thus no lights to guide us, I blink in surprise when Ditzy suddenly slows, signals—an unbroken habit, even with nobody on the road—and pulls into the parking lot of a decrepit-looking motel. The sky overhead is still the very faintest, deepest shade of blue, turning the whole world the same colour. It's just enough to see the outline of the building, and the dark windows that line its flanks. I shiver involuntarily.

Ditzy parks in the parking lot and turns off the car. A deafening silence falls. No night birds. No treefrogs.

"Meg?" says Calico J. "You're the safe-house scout."

I swallow hard as my hand creeps half-consciously for my lucky shark keychain. It never leaves my pocket these days. "We'll need to look around the outside before we go in. Stick together."

The others nod silently. Ditzy pops the doors on the car, and I grab my hockey stick before we step out into the cold, deathly still night. My headlamp's beam assaults my eyes as I turn it on. The motel springs into view. Its roof hunkers low over stained white walls studded with doors at regular intervals, then extends out over a rickety, pillared veranda. Shadows swoop back and forth when I turn my head.

Calico J and Ditzy are with me. Patrick is not. He's still in the back seat of the car, hugging his bag.

"Can I stay here until you've scouted?" he asks.

"I'm fine with that. Ditzy, can you close the doors?"

"What if we need to run back?" She casts a dubious look at the forest around us. "Aren't there, like, bears out here?"

"Not in this part of the country. Well, not usually. And they're the shy kind unless people have been feeding them."

"You're really selling this, hun."

I'm not about to argue with her over black bears when Patrick is obviously not okay with coming. "Look, just close the door. If a bear shows up, just shout and wave your bat. You have your bat, right?"

"I've got one better." She swings her hand off her shoulder, and I realize she's brought her new flail along. Weirdly, that makes me feel safer. I'm less scared of black bears than of a Sleeper suddenly appearing from around the motel, but that weapon could easily brain a human. Not that we'd see a Sleeper anyway unless we said its name. I'm being paranoid again. I'm used to the dark, but something about this human relic of a building in the dark is infinitely creepier than the forest all around.

"J?" I say, because I won't be caught dead out here without checking that both my companions are armed. I've got my hockey stick in hand and my buck knife at my hip, its sheath unsnapped so I can grab it at any moment. Calico J lifts his own weapon. It's a decapitated broom handle that he uses like a quarterstaff, and I've seen him do some damage with it. All else failing, it's good defense.

"Alright," I say, as the car doors swing shut behind me on Ditzy's prompting. I turn my headlamp on the motel again. "Let's go."

Like this chapter if you'd sleep in the car

Comment what you'd be most scared of finding inside the motel  🧟‍♀️