Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
“Oh my God, Tylenol,” I almost sobbed.
We all started walking again more quickly than before. We turned onto the paved road that led to the gas station a quarter mile or so up ahead, and I never thought I’d be so excited about asphalt, but I was. Oh, I was. I grabbed Charlie’s arm. “We did it,” I said. “We made it, Charlie. The nightmare is over.”
He grinned at me, but then took out his phone and raised it to the sky as had been his habit since the crash. He was like a man who’d been tossed into the ocean, reaching for an invisible lifeline.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “They’ll have a landline there. Or some other way to call for help.”
We were hurrying toward that beautiful piece of civilization that would offer a way to reach the outside world. And a toilet! I could pee in a toilet rather than squatting in the woods. “Never again!” I shouted to which Charlie glanced over at me in alarm. I laughed and squeezed his arm again.
A quarter mile felt like twenty as we limped toward our destination, turning onto the paved entryway to the lone gas station. With each step, however, my hope diminished. “It looks closed,” Charlie said.
Tuck was already walking slowly, and we caught up to him, all moving at the same pace now. “Maybe the power outage extends all the way here,” Tuck murmured. “There could still be people inside. The lights might just be off.”
There was a vehicle sitting in the middle of the road, and Tuck leaned over to look in the window and then stood straight, his head turning toward another car sitting to the side of the road.
“Why are they just sitting there?” I asked, as Charlie and I came to stand next to him, shading my eyes as I looked farther down the road where I could see another car seemingly abandoned near the center as well. It was like all the vehicles that had been traveling on this road had just…stopped. So where were the people? Why hadn’t they been towed? It was eerie.
“I don’t know,” Tuck muttered. “But it makes me think the station might not be open if these cars are just sitting here like this.”
“Wouldn’t a gas station have a generator though?” I asked. “I mean, usually businesses, especially crucial ones like gas stations, have generators, right?” Charlie looked at me and nodded hopefully. Honestly though? I had no idea who had generators or even how they worked. But it…sounded right.
“Let’s just stop guessing and wait and see,” Tuck said before he started walking again.
We all stepped into the lot and came to a stop as we looked around. There was an ice machine out front of the tiny store, and a lotto sign in the window that was obviously meant to be lit—but was as dark as the rest of the place.
Tuck started walking first, moving slowly and cautiously as he glanced around like we might be ambushed at any moment. We walked past the singular gas pump and came to stand in front of the store. The sound of the door of the ice machine opening broke the silence and made me startle. I looked over at Charlie, who smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. “The ice is gone and what’s left is mostly melted,” he said.
There was a handwritten sign on the door of the store that said, “Sold Out.”
“What do you think that means?” I asked but received no answer from either Charlie or Tuck. I cupped my hands against the glass and peered inside, my gaze roaming the small space. “There’s nothing in there,” I said. The refrigerators along the far wall were empty, as was the case that would have held sandwiches near the register. I wanted to cry.
Worse than that, there was no person manning the register who might have called for help.
“They must have cleared the food out so it wouldn’t go bad,” Charlie said.
“Or people bought it all,” Tuck said, gesturing to the sign again.
“It’s just…weird,” I said. And I was so disappointed and hungry that I felt like I was going to lose it.
“Let’s fill up our water bottles at least,” Tuck said as he took his empty bottle from his bag and dipped it into the ice machine that was now a water machine. I was sure the water would be less than clean now that it had been sitting in a metal freezer, but still safer than scooping water out of a stream, and I had finished the last of mine hours ago, so I did as he suggested, drank half the first bottle I scooped, and then refilled it again.
Tuck pointed off through the trees. “Look. I think I see a highway there. It looks like a portion of overpass. See that?”