Race to Refuge

Chapter Fourteen: Ty

"Ty? Are we going to go see Nana now?"

Ginny sounded exhausted and I knew that I was. It was dark now. The thought of spending the night in the woods wasn't very appealing, but the thought of us trying to figure out if the situation at the retirement community was safe while we were this tired didn't exactly sound like a good idea, either. Besides, I really didn't have much experience driving at night.

"Ginny," I broached carefully, "I want to see Nana too. But it's been a really big day. Right? You were in school this morning and since then we've escaped town, looted a store, and run over a zombie with a car." I tried to get a smile out of her and was glad to see just a hint of one play around Ginny's mouth.

"What are we going to do, though?" asked Ginny. "Where is it safe?"

I was wondering the same thing. "We could go into the woods and camp out—just for tonight. We do have camping equipment."

"Do you know how to put the tents together? Because I don't," said Ginny.

"The one I took from the garage I could put up in my sleep. But it's a one-person tent. The one I just swiped from Bo is a new tent that might take me a while to figure out. And we're losing light pretty quickly, too," I said, trying to think it through.

"Couldn't you just turn on the van's headlights and set up the tents?" asked Ginny.

I grinned at her. "You're thinking pretty well on your feet, Sis! That's a good idea. The only thing is that I just don't know how far this ... infection ... has spread. We might not want to attract any attention to ourselves with lights. Maybe, just for tonight, we can sleep in the van."

Ginny turned in her seat and looked doubtfully into the back. It was a mess, since I'd just flung stuff in the back in a massive hurry. The third row of seats were down and there was camping stuff and food and water bottles all over the place.

"I can move some things around and make a place for you to lie down. And I'll put the seat all the way back and just sleep in the driver's seat," I said.

Ginny reached over and gave me an unexpected hug. "You're doing a great job, Ty. Better than Mom and Dad would have done."

I felt myself coloring at the praise. I muttered, "Not that great of a job."

"You are. You know how Mom and Dad were."

I did. And it didn't escape my notice that she was talking about them in the past tense. In a lot of ways, that was probably healthy.

I carefully drove the van off the road and through a break in the trees off the rural route highway. I was hoping to conceal it a little from the road so that no one would see us, but vans aren't exactly good off-road vehicles. Moving the stuff around did take a little longer than I thought. But by the time she and I closed our eyes, we were completely exhausted. I fell asleep quickly to the almost immediate sounds of Ginny's regular breathing as she fell into a deep sleep.

I woke up the next morning jerking out of my sleep with a gasp. Life itself was a nightmare right now, and waking up, my situation didn't seem any better than it had in the dream. I checked my watch and saw it was already noon. We'd been tireder than I'd thought. Ginny was still sleeping and I hated waking her up. Maybe I could just start driving and she'd still be able to catch up on sleep.

I needed to use the restroom, though. I smiled at my choice of words. Restroom. Yeah, there weren't too many of those around. I didn't want Ginny to wake up and not find anyone here, so I gently moved to the back of the van and lightly touched her shoulder. She woke with a start, too, just like I had.