Chapter 7
From Ruby's point of view.
I smiled at him, and when his face took on a dreamy sort of look, it made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Laugh at how wonderfully happy I felt, and cry at how lucky I was to have him.
We kept walking north for a while, and after about half an hour, we finally reached the outskirts of a little town. I felt relieved that we had reached it, because I was so hungry that I felt nauseous. It was an awful feeling, but I wasn't that unaccustomed of it, thanks to Thurmond.
We had to get through a small residential area to get to the main part of town, so the group slowly made their way over a white washed picket fence around a house on the outside of the residential area. We passed several dilapidated houses, some with their front doors thrown open and the windows shattered, others looking calm and peaceful, but old. The sight of them made me slightly sad, because they made me remember what it was like to have a house of my own, but then to have it ripped away from me suddenly. But then I looked at Liam's face again, and I felt happy again, almost as if he was an everlasting fountain of joy.
We passed the suburbs after about five minutes, and then we had to walk a little longer until we saw a gas station and convenience store. Cole, Liam, Chubs, and I and a few other kids went inside to pick up supplies while Vida and another Blue kept a gun trained on Clancy outside the store.
We passed several collapsed gas pumps on the way in, dodging puddles of old gas and the pumps' rubber hoses outstretched in our path. Once we got through the minefield of gas pump obstacles, we got to the front of the store and tried the door, but it wouldn't budge. They were automatic opening doors, and they were stuck in place. Liam stepped forward and pressed his hands onto the glass, then rooted his feet steadily in place, leaning forward, and began to push against the doors. I grinned to myself as his face reddened slightly, and the doors began to slide apart. Once there was a crack between the doors, he pushed them apart farther, and we were able to slip through.
Once we were in, I saw Cole looking at Liam and shaking his head, and Liam grinning back and shrugging. I knew they were exchanging looks about what Liam had just done, and we all knew that he had done it to show off his strength for me. It made me feel good, though. Even though Liam could have used his ability to open the doors, he chose to use his own strength to open it. It made me feel special that he wanted to show off for me.
I looked around to first look for a bag of some sort, and I found a shelf with a few backpacks on it. I grabbed two and handed another one to Liam, who smiled at me again, making me melt some more. I snapped out of it and went to work, grabbing anything that looked like we could use it. I grabbed soap, toilet paper, mouthwash, Band-Aids, bottles of hydrogen peroxide, gauze, bottles of water, canned fruit and vegetables, canned soup, canned meat, boxes of non-expired and unopened crackers, and even more. Once my two backpacks were filled, I met up with the others at the front of the store, and I saw Chubs snacking on some little cake thing.
He saw me looking and glared at me. "What?" he said, raising his hands in question. "You have to be able to splurge sometime."
I hoisted my backpacks a little higher on my shoulders and took a glance at everyone else's loads. Liam had three backpacks hanging from his shoulders, Chubs had one, looking begrudgingly at Liam because of the apparent fact that he wouldn't let him carry more, Cole had two backpacks, and the other kid had a paper bag filled with more cans of food. We walked out of the store with the others, regrouping with everyone else on the road outside the gas station. The kids' eyes lit up when they saw all the bags, and even more when Cole announced that we would eat as soon as we got back in the forest. I was hungry myself, so I was definitely happy to finally have food.
We all headed through the rest of town to get to the forest again, and once we were under the safety of the trees, we pulled some of the food out of our backpacks and rationed it out among the kids. Everyone ate ravenously, including me, and I savored the feeling of actually having enough food to fill myself with.
I knew it wouldn't last, though. We had a long way to go, and we'd barely covered any ground. And that wasn't even all we had to cope with. There were also PSFs to elude, and the dangers of the natural world.
It was going to be a long trip.