Rowan Steele - The Dying Light

“You’re not the ranger,” the man said.

The hopefulness that had been his voice moments ago was gone now, and instead he sounded suspicious, wary.

Jack understood.

“No. The station was empty,” Jack said.

“Dammit,” the man muttered under his breath.

The woman tossed her husband, Jack assumed, a dirty look and then looked at Jack and Cassandra.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “We were camping and heard that message on the radio, but there’s been no updates and we haven’t seen another soul.”

“That’s lucky. It’s not good out there,” Cassandra whispered.

The woman looked like she wanted to protest, but Jack guessed something in Cassandra’s voice stopped her.

“It might be best if you stay out here for a while. Don’t try to go back to the city. It’s a death trap,” Jack said.

He didn’t say the Z-word, but the man blanched, and the woman looked to believe him.

“Any word from the government?” the man asked.

“Nothing,” Cassandra responded. She sounded sad, forlorn, but also certain.

The woman’s shoulders slumped, and the man shook his head.

“I assume you have an RV,” Jack said.

The man looked wary, but after a moment nodded. “Yeah,” he finally admitted.

“Is it stocked?” Jack asked.

“Well enough,” he said.

“Protect it and stay out of sight,” Jack said.

He hated to sound that way, but also knew that hiding the truth from them wouldn’t help.

“What about you?” the man asked.

“We’re making her way to her hometown.”

“Good luck,” he said.

Jack nodded and then the man and woman looked at Cassandra.

“Take care,” she said.

The family nodded at her, and a moment later, Jack walked out of the ranger station and around the building to their bikes.

They fell away without speaking, but about ten minutes later Cassandra looked at him.

“We didn’t even ask their names,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter,” he responded.

“No,” she said, “I guess it doesn’t.”

Though she was agreeing with him, Jack could see the hurt, understood that this wasn’t normal to her. It wasn’t normal to him either, but he was getting used to it. He hoped she would too.

They pedaled in silence, Jack considering what he had discovered at the ranger station. Which wasn’t much at all.

He hadn’t expected to find a bounty, but at least a couple of bullets for the .45 would have been helpful. The thing had looked ancient, and Jack wasn’t completely sure it wouldn’t backfire on them if he tried to shoot it. But, at the very least, the trip had confirmed something he already knew.

This was everywhere. With no end in sight.

He needed to get Cassandra to where she was going and soon. Jack knew they had reached the point where people would start to realize that help wasn’t coming, and between zombies and desperate survivors, it would get very, very ugly.

Before that happened, he wanted to be somewhere, if not hunkered down, then at least with supplies that would see him through whatever was on the horizon.

They pedaled until dusk, and as the sun slowly faded, Jack looked over to Cassandra.

“We should find a place for the night,” he said.

He wanted to keep going, but he knew that would be foolish. As dark as it was, he wouldn’t be able see five feet in front of himself. He certainly wouldn’t be able to see anything that might be out there lurking. So, though he was anxious to stay on the road, anxious to finally get to their destination, he wouldn’t be foolish or reckless.

“Okay,” Cassandra said.

They got off the main path and walked the bike into the woods.

Jack stopped about a quarter mile away from the path, deep enough in the woods that he wouldn’t be seen if someone were to happen by but close enough that he could see the road and some of the surrounding area.

“Here’s good,” he said.

He lay back against the base of one huge tree and Cassandra did the same.

Then, they settled down.

She unpacked her tent, but after a few moments looked at him.

“I don’t want to sleep in this,” she said.

“Me either,” he responded.

She nodded, and then laid the tent out so that the material covered some of the grass.

“Not five hundred thread-count sheets, but I guess it’ll do in a pinch,” she said.

“You take the first shift,” he responded. “Get some sleep, and I’ll wake you up when it’s time for us to switch,” he said.

She nodded and then lay down immediately.

It was dark now, so dark that it wouldn’t have made a difference if they were inside of the tent or out. But Jack understood what she was saying. There was something about being confined, about not being able to see what was coming even if there was nothing you could do about it that didn’t appeal to him.

She must have been tired, because she fell asleep without another word, something that was uncommon for the woman whom Jack suspected was usually chatty. Jack knew that she was trying her best to keep that tendency under wraps, but he had seen it anyway.

He appreciated the silence.

While wasn’t all bad to have someone to talk to, he also need space to think and to understand. It seemed he had been preparing for this moment every day for his entire life.

That kind of scared him and also made him wonder why.

His father had been a hard ass, and a mean, mean drunk, but he’d always preached to his only child the importance of being prepared.

Jack had rebelled against that, had tried to be everything his father wasn’t. But that lesson, the one about always being prepared, had stuck with him for his entire life.

The irony of that wasn’t lost on him.

He had everything he needed, but it was thousands of miles away. And, instead of getting to it, he had saddled himself with a problem.

But how to untangle it?

He still didn’t know the answer to that and didn’t know that he was any closer to figuring it out.

What he did know was that he was prepared, and he would make it through this. He didn’t have any of the things he would have liked to, but he had something that was even more valuable.

Knowledge.

And that knowledge would help him live to see another day.

“Cassandra.”

That single word, her name uttered in a low voice that was quieter than a whisper, still managed to penetrate the depth of her sleep and awoke her.

For a split second, she wondered where she was, the chill in the air, the smell of nature, the hard ground in her body leaving her momentarily disoriented.

But just as quickly she remembered and then stood.

“I’m awake,” she whispered, not quite able to keep her voice quiet as his had been but pleased that she seemed to be doing better on that front.

They hadn’t come across anything like danger, at least not since they’d left the city, but as the hours ticked by, Cassandra began to understand the need for alertness.

The absolute requirement of it.

She wasn’t sure how she was doing, but she was slowly coming to grips with everything that was happening.

When they reached her folks, which she hoped would happen tomorrow, things would go she had planned.

It was very simple. She would see the her aunt and uncle, make sure they were okay, and then the government, the National Guard, somebody, would explain everything that happened, how they had gotten rid of those things and then tell them how they would get back on their feet.

But every single second that passed, that fantasy slipped away and became replaced with a harsher but more realistic reality.

She was going to be on her own there.