[1.1] try not to get worried
|DAY 84|
His grip tightens on the steering wheel and his foot eases off the gas pedal when he catches sight of the speedometer: 73 mph. The old car shakes and stutters but falls rapidly down to 55 mph before he puts his foot back on the gas. It feels like a slow crawl but he looks over at her in the passenger seat, where she's looking out of her open window.
The warm summer air whips her long hair around her face and he takes a moment to watch the strand that seems caught on her lip before it manages to shake itself free. His sigh is silent as he turns back to the windshield and flips his headlights on as the sky darkens.
He's about to roll down his own window but the sight of a green road sign in front of them causes him to pause. His eyes fall on her again, and he watches her face carefully for a reaction, a spark, something.
Nothing.
She doesn't react to their location and he figures it's ok, it doesn't matter anymore anyway, before he looks back to the road and spots smoke coming from a car that's wrapped itself around a telephone poll a few hundred feet in front of them.
Another seizure, he muses but doesn't say aloud, instead shifting his eyes to the car radio when the music stops.
"The date is August 4th, and it's day…" he stops listening, figures she does, too. He grips the wheel with both hands and pushes his back hard against the seat, stretching his legs. It's been days of road, of desecration and abandoned cars and empty gas stations, but he watches her out of the corner of his eye and figures there's no excuse to stop. If she doesn't need a break then neither does he.
The muffler is dragging so loudly and he thinks he might be waiting for it to break, for it to finally give out. It doesn't. Instead it just aches and groans and sparks as he zips down the asphalt at 67 mph.
He takes it back down to 55.
"…lost its last citizen today. The death toll has officially reached—" Her fingers are quick to turn the dial back to music, and when the smooth jazz comes on he finally turns on the cruise control.
When he looks over at her she is looking out her window at empty cars and twitching bodies and he thinks she should maybe close her window.
He says nothing.