I did another mini-raid of my own house with the help of Danny. The atlas was retreived, I gathered blankets, bandages, towels, mason jars, extra clothes, and an old picture. It was of myself and Brandon, my baby brother. I was kissing his cheek, and he was smiling. The picture was taken at a nearby park.
"This was when he was one," I thought aloud. "He's just over two by now. Heh, damn. Time flies." I pocketed the picture, then checked in with Danny. He was raiding our cupboards for anything good.
"You guys got jack shit. You'd have to do a lot of raiding if you all were gonna survive here." I nodded. The last thing we took from the house was batteries of all types. Once that was packed away in the blankets, we got back to the truck. I put a gun to the goon driver's head.
"Drive us back. One wrong move and your brain ends up on the window." He nodded in fear, then began the drive back.
"I promise I'll drive you back safely. You'll go unnoticed."
"Promises can be broken," I hissed in his ear. He began crying again, but I didn't care. Just like how they didn't care when they took Ava away and disposed of me, to leave me to die.
---
As "promised", Danny and I were brought back safely with the supplies.
"You'll live again, man. But if you say a word to the others, I promise you'll end up like me." He nodded, still shaking, and ran off. He probably wasn't going to keep his "promise", but I had planned for that.
"Ty's back!" Danny called. I looked to see Ty carrying two sacks, one per shoulder.
"Got some stuff!" He laid the stuff down: ammo, canned beans of all types, cooking pots, some batteries, and towels.
"Good. I didn't even think of the cooking stuff." Then a little thing hit me. "How'd you get the ammo?"
"Gambling with unexperienced shits," he shrugged. I shrugged back.
"Fair enough." I checked the time on a watch I'd picked up from an old jeweler: 23:56. "Get in and start hotwiring. Where's Quentin?"
"On his way, he's in a heated game of poker." I nodded again. To keep a little fresh, I punched at invisible enemies and worked to balance on one leg. Danny kinda helped, but for the most part, he stood back and watched.
---
After another half hour, Quentin and Ian had come back. Sage had just arrived from raiding his grandfather's farm for anything of use. Pogan was still out.
"Did any of you see Pogan on your way here?" Negative grunts from everyone. I knew he was more than capable of defending himself, but I still get worried. I swung my one good leg back and forth from the edge of the Humvee's back entrance, in a trance. I've lived through a lot of emotional/mental stuff, but I never thought I'd see the day where I'd be without my entire left leg. I gotta thank the Doc, if I ever see him again.
"Pogan's approaching," Ty alerted me. I snapped up from my trance to see my old friend carrying a large sack over his shoulder. From his growing beard, he looked like a young Saint Nick.
"Got some stuff. Not much, though." He threw the sack down and presented us with primarily canned beans and dirty-ish water. He held something under his arm, too, but I had a feeling I knew what it was. He helped pack everything in, and Quentin did the final motions to get the vehicle up and running. Everyone packed in in silence, and Quentin took the wheel.
---
The city had just disappeared over the horizon. I was bored, so I fogged up the window and drew with my finger. I'd so far made a little story of a skateboarding stick man. Pogan and Ty were talking, Danny was drawing next to me, and Ian was managing the atlas. I exhaled sharply.
"What'sa matter?" Danny asked quietly.
"Bored," I said simply. "Mr. Stick Man's about to break his arm goin' off the ledge." I drew just that, and it encaptured Danny enough to stick around and watch me work. All was going well until we hit roadwork (potholes all over the place). I gave up drawing when Mr. Stick Man had suddenly become squiggles and an oval and I was bouncing off the floor.
"This is your driver speaking," Quentin called over the sounds of rubber and metal bouncing on cement. "We've hit a few rough patches, and it is unknown when they will stop. Due to the recent 3.6 earthquake, the tectonic plates have shifted enough to move the road and make all these damn potholes--!" He swerved to avoid the larger ones, which sent a lot of us flying to one side altogether. "Uh, just hang in there. We'll be in Houston before you know it." I groaned in my head, but at least it wasn't across the entirety of America. Ty moved to talking to Danny, and I asked Pogan about the bundle that he still had under his arm.
"Is that my sketchbook or my journal?" I asked in a hushed tone. He nodded, and out came my black sketchbook. It was a smaller model of my average-sized one, and I had long since forgotten what I drew in this one. I thumbed through the pages to see some of my more twisted drawings: I was fused with a Titan, Danny was a ghoul, his friend Mary was a human, and Desmond was a puny human who lived in a mouse hole. We were under attack by these creatures, Y-Smilers, at night, and used gravel as barriers around the house. There were Y-Smiler Plains, the Shadow Forest, the Pier, and off the mini-map I'd sketched, the spawner of the Y-Smilers. "Ah, memories."
"I like this one," he pointed to a sketch of Mettox--myself--looking out to the spawner that was a distance away. I chuckled.
"I like this one, lemme show you." I thumbed through the pages until I found the one of Mettox picking white fruit from a dark grey bush. She was still in need of her hair's coloring and the background, but it was still lovely in my eyes. He looked it over, then nodded his approval. "Did you grab something for me to draw with?" He shook his head. "No matter. The road's too bumpy now, anyways." I shut the lid on the book. It went into my pocket, just barely fitting thickness-wise.
"Maybe when we get to Houston, you can raid a Michael's for whatever you want?"
"That sounds like a dream I used to have, back when you had to pay for everything." He chuckled in turn.
"Now, just fight for it." I had to give him that; it was all too true.
