Despite herself, in the next few days Maka is forced to admit that having the girls around did offer a somewhat refreshing change of pace. She'd been travelling with Soul for long enough now that she was used to his more reserved disposition, but that didn't mean it wasn't occasionally nice to have someone slightly more upbeat travelling with them.
Liz's incessant need to check out every single town and landmark and Patty's compulsion to use the toilet about fifty times a day didn't even dampen her enjoyment of the outward journey. It slowed them down, sure, but it's not like they were in a rush to get anywhere particularly quickly.
As Liz and Patty persuade Maka to outnumber Soul on the music vote for the car journey, she finds herself actually enjoying singing along to some God-forsaken pop song with the two older girls (despite the fact that she'd never been much into music herself).
And not to mention, female company was very much appreciated, even if it did make Soul even more reserved than usual.
As a result, a journey that should have taken one day, according to Soul's projections, ends up taking three whole days to complete. And that wasn't even including the two-or-so days they'd spent just skulking around Salt Lake City, searching for food, medicine and weaponry. Of course, Soul had spent much of this time very concerned over Maka, who herself had been stuck in bed with a nasty headache and a mild concussion.
When they do hit the road, all piled into Soul's acquired four-by-four, they drive for around an hour at a time before the girls get bored and want to stop to see something, or find food, or just take a detour from their mostly forest-based route to some local village they've spotted on the map.
"There might be survivors there!" Liz would splutter indignantly, to which Soul would snort and recount that he doubted it very much.
On one such occasion, on their second day on the road with the girls, Soul falls asleep in the back of their truck while Maka drives, Liz in the passenger seat with a crusty old map in her lap and Patty in the back, her head poking in-between the two of them.
"He snores!" she exclaims, side-eyeing Soul who's slumped over by the blacked-out window. A quick glance to the right-wing mirror confirms it: his chest rises and falls steadily and Maka smiles at the reflection.
"He's out cold?" she asks Patty, who nods after poking the poor boy.
"Looks like it," Liz laughs. "It's kind of funny to see him so vulnerable, you know?" she giggles. "Part of me just wants to draw a moustache on him."
Patty giggles. "I don't have a pen," she sticks out her bottom lip like a child. "But I would. He looks like a baby."
Maka raises an eyebrow. "Leave him. He's tired, he's been on lookout duty pretty much every night since we found you guys, and on hunting duty pretty much every day," she points out.
"Yeah, boy needs some chill," Liz states definitively.
"Maybe after he naps, he'll be less grumpy with everybody!" Patty wonders, her eyes sparkling with glee as she stares at the boy perpendicular to her, and Maka snorts.
"He's been like that since I met him. I think that's just what he's like, honestly." She shrugs. "You get used to it."
"Really?" Liz asks her. "So, you guys get along well?" she waggles her eyebrows at Maka's direction and the younger girl grips the steering wheel with a fierce intensity.
"Yeah. We do. He saved my life a bunch of times, and he's… kept me sane, I guess. I was starting to lose it, when we met. Hallucinating, stuff like that."
"Loneliness can drive you crazy, I get it." Liz nods. "I'm lucky I got my sister with me, otherwise I'd go mad."
"You guys always travelled together?"
"We used to rob rich guys together back in Brooklyn. Then, the streets got kind of rough. We saved up some money and hopped a plane to LA. That's where we were when the virus hit."
"How is LA?"
Liz falls quiet and Patty speaks up.
"Everybody is dead there, too. Ghost town," she shudders. "More like zombie-town. It's bad, there."
Liz takes over from her sister and Maka can't help but think that they must be close, if they know when to finish each other thoughts. "We hit the road. Been travelling around west for a while. Killing zombies, letting off steam, finding ways to pass the time." She sighs. "LA… was a bad scene. There were a lot of bad people who survived the virus, people who just wanted to start gangs, kill other survivors, rape, theft… that kind of thing. It was like… it was like everyone turned into criminals the moment that society fell apart." She twiddles with her thumbs. "When we saw you and Soul, we couldn't take the chance. We wanted to screw you over before you could screw us over."
Maka shrugs. "I get it."
"Do you?" Liz asks, her question probing. She jerks her head to the back, where Soul still lies asleep. "You should be careful. Guys will take advantage of girls when all the chips are down."
She shakes her head vehemently. "No. Soul… isn't like that. I trust him. I trust him with my life." She swallows. "And I've never met anybody else I could say that about."
"So… are you guys like…?" Patty asks, smooshing the tips of her two forefingers together to indicate… well, something. Maka herself isn't entirely sure what she's insinuating.
"No!" she blushes furiously, eyes darting once again to the dirty road in front of them. "Not at all. We're just travelling together." She focuses on their surroundings, ignoring the look that Liz and Patty share. At that point, Liz pulls a tube of lip balm from her jacket pocket and starts to apply it in the rearview mirror.
"Well, if you're not interested then I just might be. If you really trust him that much, he must be a good guy. And he's good-looking. A little rough-around-the-edges for my tastes, but he looks around my age and I haven't had any action in months."
Maka makes a forced attempt to stop gripping the steering wheel with her vicelike claws, and a concerted effort to make her voice sound casual when she replies. "Go ahead," she replies permissively. "I'm sure he wouldn't say no to a girl like you."
She turns up the volume of the speaker blasting out Britney Spears before Liz can say another word.
Patty blows air out of her lips like a horse. "Psh. I'm bored, guys. Somebody talk about something," she demands.
Liz and Maka share a look, a secret smirk at Patty's expense. The girl really was just like a young child, despite being older than Maka by a year. "Uh, okay," Maka thinks on her feet. "If you guys could travel anywhere in the world, where would you travel and why?"
Patty answers immediately. "I'd go to Disneyland, Florida!" she exclaims in excitement. "I tried to convince Lizzy to go there before, but she said it was too far…"
"That, and I'm not sure the rides will actually be in commission anymore, hun," Liz shrugs with a smile. "It would have been cool to go while it was still working though, huh? Did either of you guys ever go?"
"No," Soul replies, still fixated on the road ahead, barely listening.
"No, I never did. I lived in Maine my whole life, and then went and studied in Colorado," she looks wistfully out the window. "Florida is pretty much the further spot from either of those states," she laughs. "Liz, how about you?"
Liz thinks for a second, but she knows the answer to this one. "Oh, Paris. Definitely Paris," she smiles serenely. "I want a guy to take me on a date at the top of the Eiffel tower, maybe hand me a single rose on a warm July night…" she daydreams. "A single saxophonist could serenade us with some romantic blues as we pick at our hors d'oeuvres and he tells me how radiant I look in my sparkling red Chanel suit."
Soul snorts out loud, only apologising after Liz sends him a mean look. "Sorry, sorry," he laughs through his apology, making it sound a little less sincere. "I just… imagine how sweaty you would be after all those steps," he shares a grin with Maka in the rearview mirror and Liz folds her arms.
"What's your idea of romance then, Soul?" she asks a little petulantly.
He grimaces. "None, ideally."
"Ever dated anybody? Liz has dated lots of guys."
"Not seriously, no," Soul answers honestly. "And to the previous question… I would visit Slovakia."
There's a silence in the car.
"Slovakia?" Liz repeats. "What the hell is worth visiting in Slovakia?!"
Soul shrugs. "Culture. Music. History. Architecture. Amazing natural beauty," he reels off. "Or Cologne, in Germany. Official city of Jazz," he says triumphantly.
The sureness of his answer makes Maka smile. "That's cool. I've heard nice things about Ljubljana," she says sweetly in response.
"Bless you!" Liz jokes, laughing. "Well, I've never been to Slovakia. But I've been to Cologne and I have to say… it was worth every penny. I loved all the live jazz shows, especially the ones where guys would practically pour the german beer down my throat…" she smiles serenely and envisages a better time.
Maka tries to meet Soul's eyes again in the rearview mirror but he's looking at Liz. "Oh, man, I'm so jealous. I would have loved to see the live jazz, back when everyone was alive."
"Well, for all we know they're fine in Europe…" Liz theorises, but Maka interrupts.
"No way are they fine in Europe. The virus wasn't contained properly, it spread everywhere. No continent of the world was safe. Except for maybe some crazy isolated old island, everyone's infected."
"Not us," Patty retaliates.
Maka sighs. "Yeah, not us…" she looks back out the window.
Trees fly past her in her peripheral vision and she focuses hard on ignoring the chit-chat that continues without her as she lets her mind drift away.
"Reno! Biggest Little City in the World," Liz announces proudly, waking Maka up from her slumber.
She rubs her eyes, groggy and tired. She looks around at their surroundings and frowns. "Are we here…?"
"Yep!" Liz beams.
"Biggest little city… that's cute. Did you make that up, sis?"
"Nope!" Liz exclaims. "It's on that billboard," she takes one hand off the steering wheel to point out in the distance. All four passengers follow her finger and Patty hums in appreciation.
"Oh, right," she shrugs.
Soul frowns. "Hey, you know the fuel tank is empty?" he tells Liz.
Liz looks at it and swears. "Shit!" she says angrily. "I thought that red light was flashing because somebody wasn't wearing a seatbelt!"
Soul blinks at her slowly, like she's stupid, and then Maka watches his jaw set as they all stare ahead.
In front of them, for what stretches on for miles and miles, is gridlocked traffic. Rows and rows and rows of cars sit idle; growing rust and moss from between the seats.
"Not like we're going anywhere, anyway," Liz comments. "Damn, and I thought the highway was bad on the way here."
"Reno was near ground zero…" Maka says under her breath. She fiddles with the door handle as Liz rolls to an eventual stop, getting out from her seat to stare at the horizon. "We're almost in town. Should we find somewhere to stay on foot?" she asks Soul.
He gets out too, leans on the bonnet of the car. "Christ," he says, running a hand through his hair, before turning to Liz. His white face tells Maka that they're in trouble. "I don't want to go anywhere on foot. How are we gonna carry our supplies? If ground zero was near here, you can bet they're going to be shit out of food."
Liz and Patty share a look and Maka tries to come up with a plan. "Let's carry as much as we can, okay? We'll find somewhere, just for tonight, and we'll move first thing tomorrow."
Soul swears and kicks the dirt. "This wouldn't be a problem if I was on my motorcycle…" he mutters to himself, beginning to drag out weapons from the trunk of the car. "C'mon, I'll carry guns, Maka – you can take ammo. Liz and Patty, you guys wanna split up the rest of the water and the cans?"
Liz grumbles, loading up her backpack with green beans. "I didn't sign up for this…" She makes a disgusted face at a particularly gross-looking expired can of sprouts and throws it back into the trunk. "This survivor's colony had better be worth it."
