||Series Removed|| OTB

7 - Stay

7

 

The vehicle that Tomás 'acquired' for us had exceeded everyone’s expectations. In the abandoned driveway of a neighbouring villa, the silver behemoth stared back at me as I choked out gushes of excitement.

“T-This… You… Man, we’re gonna be riding in style!” As we moved the gas cans over from the Todd’s house to fill up the beast, I took another sneaky peek along the side of the dusty-yet-powerful RV. The windows were tinted black, and it had massive wheels that could pop a Lost’s skull open just by coming into contact with the hardened rubber.

After the kids had moved all of our gear into our new motor home, our driver Alisha was pulling away just as I scrambled upwards into the electronic door. Plenty of battery power left, it seemed… I hadn’t taken a look at the interior yet, but everyone else was still glancing around in complete awe for the past ten minutes.

I couldn’t believe how luxurious it was. There were two leather couches in the middle, a small modern kitchen and a sparkling bathroom all spaciously residing in the central area. With the bunk beds in the back and the elongated sofas, there was enough room to sleep twelve adults, never mind the small kids.

Despite the exterior looking so unkempt and dirty, the inside was almost spotless and untouched. If I had to guess from the littered bottles of water and doodled-on road maps, the last people to drive this thing were survivors like us, only a little over a month ago. Sadly, they hadn’t returned or left any notice of coming back… finders keepers, I shrugged to myself.

“Hey, hey, hey!! Check it out, Danny-boy!” I heard the toilet door click open, and Tomás came sauntering out as he fanned some ‘sensitive’ magazines in front of my face. “Looks like the last guy that lived here was a total player! We’ve hit the jackpot… Which do you want a loan of first, Barely Legal Teens or Sexy Asian Slu-“

Snatching the indecent materials out of his eager hands, I hid them behind my back as the three blonde girls on the couch glanced over awkwardly before returning to their gloomy silence. “Dude, not in front of the kids! Jeez, read the atmosphere… Beth almost killed Joyce back there, she’s been shaken up ever since.”

As he raised his hands in defeat, I didn’t expect much sympathy from the musician anyway. Whenever things got too real for him, he would put on the same act as though he didn’t care in the slightest. It was his way of coping… but I was more worried about the children we’d rescued than the adults at that moment.

We were on the road for about half an hour, and the sun was already setting ahead of the dusty trail. All around us, there was nothing but unforgiving desert and faded tufts of tall grass. Even the fallen bodies of the dried-up Lost began to blend in with the road, which would almost be invisible if it weren’t for the bloodstains on their corpses…

Anna was apprehensive about engaging with the rest of us, clinging onto Beth and Stacie as though they were the only ones that she could trust. Once I had described our encounter with her parents and the fact that they could be staying at a place they called ‘Patch’, she seemed to ease up a little with the promise of finding them again.

With a whisper of a thank-you, I left her alone as I could tell that she was uncomfortable with talking to strangers… especially after what she’d just been through.

Setting myself down in the passenger seat, I watched Alisha massage her arm painfully as she tried to focus on the darkening scenery ahead. “Hey, ‘Lish. Are you sure that you're okay to drive? You took a pretty nasty fall back there…”

Her eyes narrowed casually at me, like I already knew the answer. She would never admit to it, even on the verge of losing consciousness. “I’ll pull through, once we find some better supplies… Thanks, though. I'm just thinking over what Stacie said back there.”