Silver Horizons (Silver Horizons #1)

Silver Horizons | 12

This is my last pre-written chapter. I'm working on chapter thirteen right now! (:

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"Apocalypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes." – Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

 

We drove for the longest time doing nothing other than breathing and thinking. For the past week, there had been idle chit chat but that was the extent of our communication. I couldn’t decide if we weren’t talking due to her death or if it was because of all our conversations usually ended up with the word zombies.

            I tried to start multiple conversations, like I always did, but they were all mostly futile. I didn’t even think I was trying. It occurred to me that nothing was going to change until somebody else died or we arrived at the quarantine. Our lives were too monotone and uniform that the slightest ripple in our schedule could end us. And yet there was nothing to shake us up because we travelled in the car and never camped outside. We were always safe.

            Well, as safe as anyone could get during the zombie apocalypse. But that didn’t matter. Things needed to change. This car was getting way to stuffy for my liking.

            Looking ahead, I glanced at the clock and made a mental note of the time: 3:49 in the afternoon. Kyle, who was in the passenger seat, had his eyes closed and I wasn’t sure if he was sleeping or just resting his eyes. Forest on the other hand had his eyes peeled, staring straight at the road as if he was waiting for zombies to pop up out of the ground and begin attacking us. He would’ve been the post child for Wary Driver of the Week if that even existed.

            “Forest,” I said, gaining his attention. He flicked her gaze toward me in the rearview mirror.

            “Yeah?”

            “You’ve been driving for a really long time, you know.” I hoped that he caught my drift.

            He didn’t. “Yes, and?”

            I shrugged, looking away for a moment, feigning nonchalance. “Maybe you should take a break or something. From driving, I mean.”

            “Why? I’m not even tired. I’m pretty much used to driving by now.” And what he said was true. He drove most of the time, only stopping when he couldn’t stand to keep his eyes open anymore. In those rare occasions, he would pass the wheel over to his trusty newfound best friend Kyle.

            But this time, Kyle was sleeping. Or at least that was what I had decided on.

            “You can’t not be tired,” I tried to reason with him. “I can’t believe that you aren’t tired. You’ve been driving since ten this morning.”

            We had camped out in the car this morning—again—and it was Forest who woke Kyle and I up, telling us that we needed to get on the road again. These past few days, it seemed as if it was Forest’s personal goal to get up to the quarantine. I felt as though our earlier conversation at Fred Meyer had influenced this change in him. He was definitely taking this whole zombie apocalypse thing twenty times more seriously.

            He raised his eyebrows at me incredulously. “And why’s that?”

            “Because I’m tired, and I haven’t even been driving,” I explained. “Therefore, you must be pretty tired.”

            He scoffed and said, “Yeah, nice try, Elijah.”

            “Wha—“