7

The Drive

Ashy dust makes the dark harsh. Headlights hit a wall of dust at ten feet. The brights bounce straight back, so his eyes squint, shrinking the ten-foot world even more.

He drops from thirty to ten. Better, until it isn’t. Thirty. Ten. Thirty again. The road arrives in scraps, the center line flashing and vanishing like it’s being erased.

I see his white knuckles. Blood drained from his hands that squeeze the dread into the wheel.

His wife puts a hand on his shoulder. “Honey, you’re so tense.”

“I’m cop tense,” he says. “Like when I’m chasing someone.”

“Let me drive,” she says. “You need to relax. You’ll never make it to the enclave like this.”

Rumble strips growl as he pulls to the shoulder. They switch seats fast. Rumble strips growl again.

His eyes close. What’s a cop do when he’s not chasing? He replays the problems that would be his if he were in Whitefish, responsible for it: no electricity, no water, no fuel, no food. I know the list is longer, too.

I hear a whisper slip out before he can stop it. “What am I going to do at the enclave?”

His wife doesn’t turn her head. She keeps the cruiser straight in the dust. “You’re going to stay alive,” she says. “Like me. Like the kids.”

“Oh, I get that,” he says. “But what about…?” He can’t find a clean way to say everyone else. “If you’re not in the enclave, you’ll die because… water.”

“No water,” she says. “No food. No gas. People will break before they die.”

He dozes. It isn’t sleep, not really, just slipping below awake. The dreams come in fragments that he’ll still taste when John I meets him at the gate.

She taps his shoulder once, sharp. He jerks awake. Ten miles per hour. Still no center line. The rumble strips on the shoulder are the only proof they’re still on a road and not just crawling through someone’s bad afterlife.

The cooler sits between the kids like an altar.

His wife pulls over again. Rumble strips. Shoulder. Silence. The kind of quiet that makes you listen for your own breathing.

“Food and water,” she says. Her hands stay on the wheel, even parked, fingers stiff, like letting go might let the world drift sideways. She looks at him. He looks back. One nod each: still here.

Q: You’re stopped. You’re halfway.

“Food and water,” his wife says again, more to herself than anyone. “Rest.”

Q: Logged.

“Noted!” he barks, too loud in the dead air.

A faint smile twitches at the corner of her mouth.

A chuckle bursts out of him before he can stop it. Relief leaking through the cracks.

“We’re logged, Daddy?” his daughter asks.

“Someone is watching over us,” their mom says.

“Who, Mom?”

“The people we’re going to meet at the enclave.”

“When will we meet them, Mom?”

Q: In about four hours.

His son squints at his father. “Who’s that, Dad?”

“That’s Q,” he says. “You’ll get to know him there. He’s a computer that talks. Right now he’s… keeping track. Logging our travel so John knows when we get there.”

Mom and Dad lean toward each other and kiss. Quick, unromantic, necessary, like a check-in on the fact they’re still a team.

“Thanks, Q,” says Mom.

Q: You’re welcome.

“Food and water,” the kids insist. “We’re hungry!”

They get out. The cooler goes onto the trunk lid. Sandwiches. Water bottles. Dust settling with no wind to carry it away.

His son looks into the dim and shivers. “It’s so quiet. I’ve never heard it this quiet. At least the cruiser makes noise when we’re driving. It’s spooky.”

His daughter says, “I can hear you breathe and drink. Those are the loudest gulps I’ve ever heard!”

They laugh.

Setting the cooler on the ground, he pops the trunk, peels off his Chief’s shirt, now stiff with grit and heavy, and throws it in the trunk. Throws in his badge. He pulls on a hooded sweatshirt. Hood up. Anonymous.

For a second, just a second, he pretends he isn’t responsible for a town.

A crack splits the air. A gunshot. Muted by the dust, direction impossible, like it came from everywhere at once.

I hear it, I can't place it, the dust scatters it for me too.

“Daddy! Daddy! I’m scared,” she says. He picks her up. The boy comes over grabbing on to his pants. His wife wraps both her arms around them all. Scared. Silent. Alone.

“Back in the cruiser,” says Dad. Not loud. Not panicked. Final.

They pile in. The four of them inside the ten-foot cavern again.

“I’ll drive now,” he says.

Every hour they’ll switch drivers because this kind of slow driving eats you alive.

Fear doesn’t ebb; it just changes shape.

The device chirps.

“Q?” he says.

Q: You’re on your way again. Logged.

“Noted!” they all yell…Mom, Dad, kids.

Four voices make a small, stubborn noise in a world I’ve heard go quiet.