Chapter 17
Six days later, they were both exhausted, but they had made great time.
A trip that should have taken almost two weeks was already halfway over.
As they walked beneath the sign indicating they’d reached Virginia Beach, Sarah grinned at Adam.
With each passing day, she’d become more anxious about getting to her parents.
They needed her there to keep them safe.
The trip had been almost entirely void of other people.
The pair had come across the occasional fisher or family trying to escape the new reality, but otherwise, it had been quiet.
As soon as they reached Virginia, Sarah knew it would be different.
It was far too crowded in the surrounding cities for it not to spill out onto the beaches.
A detour would take them days out of the way, and that was time she wasn’t willing to lose.
They’d decided as a team to take the most direct route.
Moving along the coast, Sarah wondered if they’d made the wrong decision as campfires speckled the beach ahead of them.
After the last near week on the road with Adam, the pair no longer needed to use words to communicate their path.
Sarah jerked her head in the direction of the marsh that separated the beach from the towering hotels that lined it.
It felt like years since she’d seen the beach.
It no longer mattered that the marshes were protected.
Nature would soon reclaim far more than it had in the decades before, thanks to the solar storm.
It was still hard to believe, even after seeing it with her own eyes, that so much had changed.
Cities that had once been thriving metropolises had been thrown into chaos.
They could hear people screaming and gunshots from miles away.
Sarah wanted to help them, but there was nothing she could do.
They needed an army to rescue them, not two lone travelers.
As they inched closer to the campfires, Sarah heard the group near the end talking amongst themselves. There were three of them.
“Did you find anything good out there?” the first man asked.
“Shit, there’s nothing out there that hasn’t been looted already. I think we might have to move on to another spot. Either that or try to take over one of these larger houses where people are holing up.”
“Now, you know we can’t go doing that. There’s strength in numbers that we just don’t have.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what we’re going to do after our supplies run out.”
“We’ll figure it out when the time comes. For now, we’ll just keep looking for anything to get us by. What about you?”
The first man seemed to be the leader of the group.
He was a large man and had a thick accent.
Sarah couldn’t be sure of anything at that point, but her instinct was telling her that the men were bad news.
Just the fact that they had mentioned taking control of anything had her wondering what type of men they were.
While her heart was already pounding with anticipation, she quietly waited to hear the rest of the conversation.
“Well, I went down to the shop, and there were a couple of girls in there.”
“Oh yeah?” the man grunted. “You talking about that shop around the corner?”
“The one and the same, and there were two sweet things just waiting for a few men like us. Plus, they were pretty easy on the eyes, too. I imagine it would be easy to grab the pair of them and have our way with them.”
“How much fight do you think they’d put up?”
“Oh, they would probably struggle a bit, but isn’t that half the fun of it? I don’t think it would be hard to get what we wanted out of them.”
“Well, damn, boy. What in the hell are we waiting for?”
Adam’s gaze fell on Sarah. She knew they couldn’t sit back and do nothing while the men raped two innocent girls.
As the trio rose and stumbled past them, too drunk to notice they were there, they leaped into action.
Between both of their skills, it was easy to bring the trio down, but neither had anticipated the noise it would cause.
Minutes after the three men were lying in the marsh unconscious, Sarah saw the glow of an approaching mob from farther down the beach.
They had to move and fast if they were going to get away.
Grabbing Adam’s hand without thinking, she darted for the main strip, once bustling with happy vacationers.
Now, those who remained were either desperate to leave or desperate not to be found.
The shop had an attached garage that sloped down onto a lower level.
The large garage door was already standing open.
She could hear someone below them making a good bit of noise.
In a split second, she made the decision to head down.
It didn’t take long for them to find the two girls the men had been talking about.
They couldn’t have been older than eighteen, but the instant they saw the pair racing toward them, the girls had guns drawn.
She skidded to a stop and lifted her hands over her head.
Adam, thankfully, did the same. They didn’t have much time before the mob of people found their friends beat to a pulp and started to give chase.
If any of them were going to make it out of there alive, they needed to work together, but more so, they needed to get moving right away.
“Look, I don’t mean to startle you, and we certainly don’t mean any harm, but we need to find a way out of here or someplace to lay low for a little bit,” Sarah said.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a small mob coming for you right now.”
“Why in the hell are they coming for us, and why should we help you?” the girl asked. “We don’t have the slightest idea as to who you are.”
“We saw a few men at the edge of town talking to one another, and they said they were going to come to grab you. My friend and I took them down, but now there’s a mob looking for us, and I’m sure once the others get moving again, they’ll come back for both of you.”
“Why would you help us?”
“Just because the world has gone to shit doesn’t mean that all of humanity has. There are still good people out here, but that doesn’t mean they all are,” Sarah said.
“I don’t know what to do. We didn’t ask for you to help us. Maybe they’ll just keep moving if they know someone was looking out for us.”
“You can take that chance, and it’s up to you, but right now, we have to get going. You can come with us, but if you do, we need to get going right now.”
The first girl looked at the second with a growing concern in her eyes. “Go grab the others and tell them we’re leaving.”
“What others?” Sarah asked, confused.
Her stomach rolled with anticipation as one of the girls disappeared into the belly of the dark garage.
Suddenly, Sarah heard something she hadn’t in years.
At least not since she had been a little girl on her parents’ homestead.
The noise was still a familiar one to her as a horse nickered from the darkness seconds before emerging at the end of the lead line.
The two young girls were not without an escape.
The opposite seemed to be true. As a matter of fact, they were helping Adam and Sarah escape from the mob.
“These are Ginger, George, Grasshopper, and Greg…our parents were really into Gs,” one of the girls said with a blush.
Sarah chuckled. “What about you two? Do you have names that start with Gs as well?”
“Nope, I’m Rose, and that’s Bella,” the older one said.
“What about your parents?” Adam asked.
Bella cringed, but it was Rose who continued to speak as she handed the reins for one of the horses to Sarah and the other to Adam. The girls mounted up, and Sarah followed suit. Only Adam appeared uncomfortably unaware of what he was supposed to do to get onto the steed’s back.
“Dad died last year, and Mom’s on a cruise with her new boyfriend. We were down here for a show. We’ve got a farm in New Jersey,” Rose said.
“We’re headed to Maine,” Adam said. He’d finally managed to climb onto the horse’s back.
“Then I suggest we get out of here and fast unless we all want to make new friends with that mob you said is coming,” Bella said.
The others nodded in agreement. There would be time to get to know each other later. At that moment, they needed to get out of town.