Fight To Live

Chapter 3

][=][ Ethan Barton's POV ][=][

We had been driving for a little over an hour when the car puttered to a stop after using the gas that we had managed to siphon and fill the tank up with. We rolled to a stop in the middle of the highway, there were wrecks and broken-down cars all around but we didn't really expect there to be any gas left in them at this point. The three of us unloaded our supplies from the broken-down vehicle and began walking in the direction of Dallas, which would now be a much longer trip since we no longer had the car.

"Not to damper our moods even more than they already are... but we're basically out of food and only down to a few water bottles left," Tony stated with a frown on his face as he did a run-through of the supplies he had in the bags he was carrying. "Thankfully we are still pretty stocked on medical supplies though."

"I know. We'll have to ration as much as possible until we find some more to eat and drink. Each of you drink a couple sips, it's too hot out here and we'll dehydrate easily," Mom responded with a sigh as she glanced between us. "We should probably start sheltering during the day and moving at night so that it's cooler, we're definitely in the middle of summer right now."

"Where are we right now, anyway?" I asked as I looked at our surroundings and not being able to place where this particular stretch of highway was located.

"While you were napping we passed through Temple so we've been driving a bit over an hour. We're about a third of the way to Dallas," Mom answered. "Now that we're walking though, the next two-thirds of our journey are going to feel like an eternity."

We kept moving until we came upon a large build-up of stopped traffic. There were wrecks along with cars that had just been stopped in the road due to the wrecks. We split up and began searching the cars for anything useful. I found an intact RV and pulled the pipe from my belt. I could hear moaning from inside the camper so I wanted to be prepared. Before entering the vehicle I walked around it, finding a corpse sitting against it with a shotgun held in its hands, aimed up at where its head had once been but was now a gory splatter on the vehicle, there were holes in the wall as well. I found a note, with the keys of the vehicle wrapped inside, in the body's front pocket of its blood-covered sweatshirt.
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To whoever finds this,

Please do a dead man a favor. My daughter is inside. I couldn't put her down. She bit me and I trapped her in the bathroom but I couldn't put her down. Please save her poor, innocent soul, as I should have been able to do. There are supplies and weapons in the RV, the keys are here. The gas tank is full and there's more gas cans in the storage inside. It's all yours. May it help you like it should have helped us.

God bless you, kind stranger.
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I bit my lip as I read through the note again. "That explains the moaning I hear then," I muttered to myself as I stuffed the note in my pocket and picked up the keys, which had fallen to the ground when I unfolded the paper, up and put them in my pocket as well.

I pulled the corpse's fingers from the shotgun and carried the weapon with me as I went back around to the door leading into the living area of the camper. I gently swung the door open then pulled my pipe from my belt and got ready to fight. When I entered I found that the camper was massive. There was a kitchenette to the left that you walked through after entering, and a door to the right led up to the driver's cabin. After the kitchenette, there was a small living area that also seemed to double as a dining area. Just past the living and dining area was the bathroom, which I could identify because it was the only place I could hear moaning coming from, signaling that the man's daughter was there. Opposite of the bathroom was a fairly large storage room with canned food, bottles of water, assorted weapons, three large gas canisters, a bunch of clothing, and many other things. Past those two rooms was the bedroom which had one full-size bed tucked in the back left corner and a set of bunk beds in the back right corner, there was a TV mounted in between them and several folding chairs were hanging on hooks from the wall. A shelf underneath the TV had an Xbox and a stack of games, as well as a Blu-ray player and a box that was labeled as movies and TV shows.