The Drive

It’s dark. The headlights hit a wall of dust; brights bounce straight back into the Chief’s eyes and shrink 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 centerline flashing and vanishing like it’s being erased.

His wife looks over. His hands are clamped on the wheel, knuckles white.

She 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.”

He pulls onto the shoulder. Rumble strips growl under the tires. An ugly, comforting sound. They switch seats fast, like switching might change the sky.

He closes his eyes. What’s a cop do when he’s not chasing? He makes a list.

No water in Whitefish.
Can’t drink from the lake. Gunk.
The town’s invisible work pumps, filters, treatment. Gone.
A whisper slips 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 car 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. The dreams come in fragments he’ll still taste when John I meets him at the gate.

He jerks awake. She taps his shoulder once, sharp. Ten miles per hour. Still no centerline. 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.

His device beeps. He answers without thinking.

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.

“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 car makes noise when we’re driving. It’s spooky.”

The Chief sets the cooler down, pops the trunk, and peels off his grit-stiff Chief shirt like it’s suddenly too heavy to wear. He pulls on a hooded sweatshirt. Hood up. Anonymous.

He tosses the shirt into the trunk. For a second, just a second, he can almost pretend 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.

Then silence again. No second shot. No scream. No engine.

“Back in the car,” he says. Not loud. Not panicked. Final.

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

“I’ll drive now.”

They stop every hour and switch drivers because this kind of slow driving eats you alive. Fear doesn’t ebb; it just changes shape.

The enclave becomes the only word that matters: life.

The device beeps.

“Q?” he says.

Q: You’re on your way again. Logged.

“Noted!” they all yell…mom, dad, kids…four voices making a small, stubborn noise in a world gone quiet.