I'm back. Trying to update more, finally getting the spark in my heart for this story rekindled back. Enjoy!

Everything went smoothly. Just like how Chuckie said it would.

They all got in-and-out of the overrun suburb, and with a shit load of supplies I might add, in under ten minutes.

After driving a little over a mile outside the town lines, not hitting the brake the whole way, Chuckie gradually slowed down and pulled over to the side of the desert highway. The steady moan of the dead the only sound catching on the wind for miles.

Everyone didn't say a word, but still somehow telepathically communicated with one another to do just what they all wanted to do for the day.

Drink.

Cutting away the plastic wrap on the first of seven precious, undamaged, 24-packs of bottled water sitting in the back of the opened van trunk, they all dived in like their lives depended on it. Which they kind of did.

Though the water was lukewarm and had an almost chlorine-tint to it, a standard which they all would've been repulsed by two months before, it was the best thing they ever tasted.

Phil was glad they found such an abundance of water. He would of felt almost guilty if the two on the convenience store he drank were the only ones any of them found. Almost.

Still, as he drank his third bottled water of the day, while everyone drank their first and second's he felt good for the first time since they were back in the Finster's house and Lil was still alive. Meaning only 18 hours before.

He still felt like he was dreaming; that he wasn't just uprooted from his childhood second home and his sister was still breathing not even a day before.

Things change. Was all he could think as he held back the tears that never came when they mattered. When his sister wasn't dead and whose corpse, who never got the burial it deserved, wasn't being chowed down on by the once smiley faced neighbors of their LA suburb.

Yeah, things changed.

The exhale Tommy gave after pouring a couple precious fluid ounces on his blistering pink arm burn was nothing short of orgasmic. Swatting away the flies between pours.

Since escaping the house, he never got the chance to clean his wound he got from the now dead biker gang leader. The only medical care he got to do on it was wrapping it in a t-shirt he found under his seat.

He was furious that first night when Chuckie told him he didn't have a first aid kit in the van.

"Who the fuck doesn't put a first aid in a car, and in times like these?" He said something under those lines to his almost-ex-best-friend after getting that news. Though he knew if it bothered him that bad, he should have put some basic kit in there on his own. It was his car after all.

Still. He was once pissed and now he was relieved. Nothing would have sucked more in his eyes than in a world where the dead are trying to eat the living, and already managing to survive this long against the odds, to go down by a damn infected arm wound.

An aisle over from the seven cases of water that Dil and Kimi found in the 99.9% striped and looted Walmart sitting on an empty shelf, as if by divine intervention, was a deluxe first aid with gauze, hydrogen peroxide and bandages which hit Dil's eye on the off chance. That off chance probably saved Tommy's life.

Now that the lukewarm water was trickling down his sort-of clean looking scorched forearm, for good measure he dumped half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide on it and put the largest Band-Aid he could find in that blessed-first aid kit over the wound. Even though that "medical care" took a minute to apply, by the time the bandage was taped over the open-blister burn Tommy felt more alive than he ever did.

After an hour of just drinking and the nervous laughter of relief, and the once 24-case being dwindled to just three scattered bottles, Chuckie was the first to come to his senses, "You think we should get going? We still got a few hours of daylight left and I don't want to spend anymore time near Ridgecrest than I have too."

Everyone nodded. No one talked much anymore it seemed. The day before they couldn't get Dil and Phil shut up if their lives depended on it.

Things change.

Sitting shotgun next to Chuckie and manning the map, Tommy made the smart move to divert them away from Route 95 into Nevada and of course, Las Vegas, but instead go around it through Arizona. The last thing they wanted to do was to have to drive through a certainly infested sin city with the reanimated corpses of a million or more party people hugging their car. Though it would cost them days of travel by not taking the most direct route, they would at least arrive in South Dakota in one piece. Fingers crossed.

That, and Tommy had a more scenic route in mind.

By the time midnight came around, with only the sound of the van's engine grinding over the dirt road beneath it, they decided to stop for the night.

After another couple miles Chuckie began to slow down when the car's headlights hit the sign of what they were looking for.

WELCOME TO GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK!

Tommy had the idea of stopping here for the night, or even for a day or so. Chuckie didn't protest. The Grand Canyon was a huge nostalgic-piece of their childhood together. Spending five days in that massive puke green RV with their moms seemed like the closest thing to hell at the time. But they had all their friends, and food to eat, and laughs to explode and stories to tell. They had a soft bed, music to listen too, places to explore and yes, though they hated it at the time, people older and wiser than themselves to give them guidance and a hug.

Now they had none of that. Now they knew hell.

Back when they were eleven and the only thing on both their minds was getting their first kiss and arriving in NYC in time for Susie's gig singing at the Macy's Day Parade. That might as well have been a lifetime ago, though it was a mere five years in the past.

This brought Chuckie to realize neither himself nor anyone in their party had seen or heard from Susie, or any of the Carmichaels for the record, since everything went down. Same with Angelica and her kin.

Last time he heard anything about them was that the Carmichaels were in the Bay Area college-hunting and the Pickles left for the East coast on a sudden business trip the week before the power lines were cut. This news was two months old. Might as well of been two decades.

Still, God he prayed they were alright.

Chuckie recalled how he used to have as his iPhone wallpaper a quote from Einstein describing his theory of Relativity, "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour."

The past was that nice girl that made time fly. The present was that red-hot cinder that made each minute, each second drag on with fear for what will await in the next instant.

He wanted that nice girl back.

Chuckie pulled into park in one of the several parking lots which, according to the sign at the entrance, were a part of the Grand Canyon South Rim Visitors Center. The Visitors Center itself was a massive log cabin-like structure with a green shingled-roof about fifty yards from the lot, with several identical buildings but smaller in size peppered around it.

The place looked surprisingly deserted. With a couple RV's and a handful of cars scattered about the three massive parking lots, he felt they surely lucked out. He genuinely worried pulling into the joint and having his headlights make contact with the dead eyes of a couple hundred reanimated tourists.

Regardless, before making camp for the night he wanted to be at least somewhat reassured they weren't making a wrong choice in staying here.

"Everyone wake up. Let's check this place out." Chuckie said before turning around in his seat to see everyone sitting up right already, looking straight forward with glazed eyes. He was kind of taken aback by this. They were dead silent the whole time. He was certain they were asleep.

While everyone in the back rummaged about for weapons and flashlights before heading out, Chuckie fumbled for the baseball bat beneath his seat with tired eyes.

"Don't worry man," Tommy said sympathetically reaching over to put his hand on his shoulder, "I got this."

Chuckie glared unresponsively at Tommy, thinking his best friend didn't think he could handle this, but then he realized his good intentions. He'd been driving none stop for the last 24 hours with little to no sleep, the least his friend felt he could do was offer him to sit this one out and score some extra Z's.

"Thanks Tommy." Chuckie replied, forcing a smile and reclining back in his seat. Taking off his dirty t-shirt and rolling it up like one of those fancy cylindrical pillows he made the best bed he could manage. As everyone filed out of the van and shut the doors behind them, the gang's chauffeur finally found some much needed rest.

Kind of transitional stuff happening here, character development and whatnot. Hoped you liked it. Thanks for reading, feel free to review to let me know how you'd like the story to go. :)

Until next time. -Crocy98