6. Good Morning & Good Night #2
Seth climbed back into Beast and sat for a moment behind the wheel. “Five days,” he murmured to himself. “Five days and a whole lot of praying nothing goes sideways.”
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get moving.”
Jay drove the SUV, Cara navigating beside him. Seth followed close behind in Beast, the massive vehicle growling steadily over the broken asphalt. Their trailer rattled along behind Jay, metal chains clinking in the cold morning air.
The first hour passed in an unnatural silence, broken only by the crunch of tires on asphalt.
Spring had thawed the snow but left the world looking half-decomposed.
Winter had stripped away everything soft, and the thaw had only exposed more ruin beneath.
Grass pushed up through cracks in the pavement.
Saplings sprouted through collapsed roofs.
Vines crawled steadily up rusted guardrails, reclaiming territory faster than any human effort ever could.
Nothing out there looked alive. But nothing looked fully dead, either.
Jay slowed as they passed a burned-out RV on the shoulder, its metal twisted and warped, the interior gutted and black. Cara turned away, understanding exactly what had likely happened inside.
They kept going.
Every few miles, they passed the skeletons of old lives: a gas station with its pumps ripped out, hoses scattered across the concrete; a playground buried under windblown debris, one swing still moving faintly in the wind; a collapsed delivery truck with its doors flung open and boxes spilled in every direction—picked clean months ago by hands long gone.
The whole world looked dead.
Cara traced their route on the map, her voice low. “There’s a small town up ahead. We should probably cut around it if we can—the main road cuts straight through the center.”
Jay nodded. “Yeah. We avoid anything dense unless we’ve got no other choice.”
They turned onto a side road where the pavement grew worse. Branches slapped against the sides of both SUVs as they threaded their way through.
Behind them, Seth muttered into the radio, “The world went to shit. Fast.”
Jay gave a humorless snort. “Didn’t take long once people started dying.”
No one argued with that.
Around noon, they crested a hill.
Below them, the valley was a graveyard of cars—hundreds of them, tangled in a frozen, silent stampede.
Jay swore under his breath, his knuckles tighteded on the steering wheel.
Cara stared, her map forgotten in her lap, trying not to imagine the panic, the screams, the final moments that had died here.
It wasn’t just a roadblock; it was a tombstone for an entire town.
“No way through that,” Jay said, his voice flat.
Cara studied the map, then the terrain. “There’s an access road to the west. It looks clear…ish.”
“I can push through some debris if it comes to it,” Seth offered over the radio. “Beast is built for exactly that.”
They rerouted.
The access road carried them past a strip mall—windows shattered, metal shutters hanging open at broken angles, a grocery store sign dangling from its last bolt.
Slumped against a brick wall, a body had decomposed to little more than sunken flesh and bone beneath torn clothing.
Nature had already begun stitching moss into the fabric.
Cara spoke in a near whisper. “The forest is taking everything back.”
Jay shifted his grip on the wheel. “Maybe that’s for the best.”
Halfway through the afternoon, they passed a collapsed fence that marked a former petting zoo.
A few scrawny goats, their coats matted and ribs showing, watched them pass before scattering back into the overgrown pasture.
A lone, shaggy pony stared from the treeline, wild-eyed, then bolted at the engine’s growl.
It wasn’t a triumphant return to nature, but it was life, tenacious and stubborn, hanging on in the ruins.
Unexpected proof that the world hadn’t died completely.
Seth whistled low over the radio. “Think we should grab Addy a goat? Might as well start her a whole damn farm while we’re at it.”
Cara snorted, surprising even herself with the sound. “She would name every single one of them.”
Jay shook his head, but couldn’t hide the smile pulling at his mouth. “Honestly? Not a bad idea. If one of those little guys is still hanging around on our way back…” He shrugged. “We’ll bring her one.”
“Addy would lose her mind,” Seth said over the radio, his voice softer than usual. “Probably try to herd it into the cabin.”
The image drew a shared, quiet smile from all of them.
Cara rolled her window down a crack, the spring air, a welcome change. She watched a deer lift its head from a ditch as they passed, its body thin but its eyes alert—a survivor, just like them.
“The world is healing,” she said, almost to herself, “but still wrong somehow.”
Jay glanced over at her, his fingers loose on the steering wheel. “Guess we’re the invasive species now.”
They drove until the sky began to bruise with evening colors—deep purples simmering at the edges of dusk, orange bleeding away along the horizon as shadows stretched long across the cracked highway. The ruins of old farmhouses and collapsed barns rolled past in a slow, haunting panorama.
Seth’s voice crackled through the handheld radio. “See anything for shelter?”
Jay lifted the radio, scanning the landscape ahead. Slightly off the road, the silhouette of a steeple jutted above a grove of wind-gnarled trees.
“Church up ahead,” he answered, his eyes narrowing. “Looks abandoned. Part of the roof looks collapsed, but the walls are still standing. Looks like there’s a lot in the back that might give us cover from the road.”
Cara leaned forward, squinting. “A collapsed roof means easy access for anything or anyone. And those trees are awfully close.”
“It’s that or we sleep in the vehicles,” Jay said.
Seth’s voice came through again, lower this time. “Copy that. I’ll hang back until you clear it. I say we sleep in the vehicles makes it easier to quickly leave if trouble pulls up.”
They pulled off the road, tires crunching over gravel and weeds.
The church loomed larger as they approached, its front cross long fallen and half-buried in the dead grass at its base.
Jay navigated the building’s side, weaving around broken fencing and scattered debris until they reached a slope of land entirely shielded from the road. Perfect cover.
Jay parked, and Cara scanned the trees with her bow resting across her lap, fingers ready.
“It’s… quiet,” she said—and out here, that observation never brought comfort, only unease.
Jay nodded. “Too quiet. But I’ll take quiet over company any night.”
Seth pulled in behind them, angling Beast so the two SUVs formed a rough wedge—defensible, with only one narrow approach.
They stepped out into the cooling air. Thick silence surrounded them, broken only by wind whistling through damaged gutters and the distant caw of crows settling into their roosts for the night.
“We’ll set up here,” Jay said, his voice firm. “Standard watch rotation. No exceptions.”
Seth wandered a few feet toward the rear of the church, his gaze sweeping the ground as he went.
“Tracks,” he said, crouching. “Old, maybe a week. One person, small stride. Could’ve been a kid.”
Cara’s brow furrowed. “Or someone injured.”
Jay sighed. “Whoever it was, they’re long-gone. Nothing we can do about it now.”
Jay met Cara’s gaze, then Seth’s. The same hard truth was reflected in all their eyes: safe no longer existed anywhere. Only safer, and only for the moment.
The sun dropped lower, bleeding its last light across the ghostly white church.
“Let’s set up,” Jay said at last. “Long night ahead.”
The three of them moved to their tasks without further talk, the only sounds the scrape of gear and the low, steady wind.