Below Zero

Strangers

He whistles as we ride down this long, never-ending dirt road. He looks forward, not daring to look me in the eye. "So..." I broke the silence. Both my hands were resting on the steering wheel, I don't recall ever turning the wheel in the past hour and thirty minutes we'd been riding. "Yeah?" He responds. I didn't have anything to say, honestly, I only spoke because his silence was killing me. I didn't trust him, he was a complete stranger. "From the way your eyes are darting around I can assume you think I'm an axe murderer." He said. I shook my head, pretending to be in denial, but this Jason guy knew better. "No, no, never." I didn't want to talk anymore, I turned the radio on. "I like this band, Static is the name, right?" "Haha, funny joke, we're stuck listening to these static noises, all the radio towers are out, remember?" He nodded. I cleared my throat and fixed my rear view mirror, clearly seeing undead people, things, wobbling around in the distance. "It's just me and you now." He said quietly. "It's possible, there could still be someone else out there." "Looks likes every living person or creature living in Denver, Colorado is dead. And they ain't went to heaven or hell, they're walking among us and honestly it still creeps me the hell out." "Same." The car started to act up, it began to jerk back and forth. "Fuck..." "What? What's wrong?"Jason looked at me confused, the way I was reacting made it look like something more horrible than the car breaking down was happening. I continued to freak out. "Fucking hell, shit!" The car broke down, completely, even the headlights shut off. We were sitting in the middle of an intersection, looking forward at the black emptied place once known as a town. Jason sighed,"Can you run? Like really fast?" "I mean, I think I can, I was a track star back in high school."I smirked, my ego grew bigger than my head. "That's um, that's great..."