This drive is long and boring. I can’t believe I’ve made it this long without dying or killing someone else. The sky is clear and the sun is so bright it’s making me blind, so I put my sun visor down. Admittedly, today is worse than ever. I can barely handle the boredom and the silence around me. I can feel it. Crackling across my fingertips, dancing just under my skin. It wants me to use it. I want to use it. I can almost feel it…. I shake my head. NO. Not again. Never again. A flash of pain cuts through me as a flicker of memory touches my mind. I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to remember… her… It tickles the corner of my brain. You think you have a choice? You do what I let you do. You suffer if I want you to. I just want to cry now. I check my steering and steady the car. This just sucks. First, the zombies, then the bridge. I have no one. The highways are desolate and empty, just a barren wasteland compared to what it used to be. What has the world come to? What has this country come to? I sigh. There isn’t much I can do now is there? Glancing at the console I try to check the time, but then I curse myself when I remember that all the times are wrong on everything. Thanks for nothing government. By the height of the sun I guessed it was around three or four in the afternoon. Time passes slowly these days. Ahead of me, I see a blockade on the highway. There’s a huge wall of cars and rubble going straight across the lanes, and I can’t get through. I pull up slowly, and check around me before I get out, making sure there’s no zombies or crazy people. Sure that the coast is clear, I lock up my car and approach the blockade.
“Hello?” I yell loudly, trying to get the attention of any people on the other side of the wall. “Is anybody there?”
There’s a commotion, and what sounds like hundreds of pop cans being crushed and swam through. I shield my eyes from the sun and look to the top, a good seven feet above me. I see movement, and then a little head pokes its way over the edge.
“Are…Are you one of them?!” His little voice carries just barely over to me.
“No, I’m human. Are YOU one of them?”
“No stupid, how can I be a zombie if I’m talking to you, instead of eating your brains out of your head?” He uses a tone of disapproval and disgust, as if he really can’t believe I would ask him that. I shake my head.
“Alright alright, my bad.” I shuffle my feet around a little, unsure what to say. “So… is there any way around this? I kind of need to get… somewhere. Anywhere.”
“Do you even know where you are?” He asks me loudly. “You’re in Nebraska, right on the state line of South Dakota. And I ain’t letting nobody in! I have to keep out the inflection!”
“NEBRASKA?!” I had no idea I had driven that long. I stopped paying attention to the signs after a while, and I just drove, lost in thought. “Whoa…Well... Please? I can’t turn around, I just got here!” I know I sounded whiney, but at this point, I didn’t care.
“Please let me in?” I use my best puppy eyes, and I hear the boy grunt.
“Fine, but if Jeb asks how you got here, I didn’t have a thing to do with it! You climbed over this wall yourself!” I breathe a sigh of relief, and climb over the wall.