Melissa woke to dim sunlight shining into her eyes. She moved so the sun wasn't directly in her eyes anymore, and squinted at the clock display on the dash. It said it was 7:30, in the morning from what she could tell as she looked out the window. It was gray and cloudy outside the car, the fog still burning off in the early morning sunlight. Glancing around the car, she noticed Seth was driving, and Roman was looking over a map in the passenger seat. Dean was still asleep, his head leaning against the window.
Roman looked up from the map to see that she was awake. "Good morning," he whispered, obviously not wanting to wake Dean up.
"Hi," Melissa murmured sleepily. She stretched as best she could in the restricted space of the car. "You guys drive all night?"
Roman nodded. "I drove 'til about one, and Seth's been driving ever since."
"Do you know how many miles we've gone?" she asked.
Roman shook his head. "Hard to tell in the dark. Though if we are where we think we are, we've made it close to 70 miles."
Melissa wanted to groan at the slow pace, but she knew that roads were probably plagued with wrecks.
As if in reply to her thoughts, Seth spoke. "At one point there was a wreck that there was no going around. So we had to double back and take another road before we found our way back to this one. Though we've made better time than Dean and Punk did."
Melissa nodded in understanding. "So are there any towns coming up?"
Roman checked the map. "There's a town right on the intersection of this road and the I-5… I can't read the name though. The ink ran or something. It's… about five miles away."
Melissa shivered. She wasn't too fond of the idea of going through a town when there was a large possibility that it was infected with zombies.
Roman gave her a sympathetic look. "We probably won't be there long. We just need to stop and syphon some gas for the car before we get on the I-5."
"And we need to check Dean's injuries," Seth mentioned. "It wouldn't be helpful to have them get infected. And besides," Seth glanced in the rearview mirror, "remember all the trouble we had when we went through a town last?"
Melissa laughed softly. "Let's hope this car isn't having problems."
The road was free of vehicles for a while, so Seth took the opportunity to speed up a little. Buildings started to come into view; they had reached the outskirts of the town. Melissa watched as they passed by a school, which had a horde of zombies wandering around in front of it. The zombies all turned to look as the car flashed by, and they started chasing it for a while, but the car was moving much faster, so it wasn't long before the horde was fading into the rearview mirror.
They saw only an occasional solitary zombie after that until they reached the exit to the I-5, which had gas stations crowded with empty cars. "I do not like this at all…" Melissa muttered, staring out the windows. There was nothing moving except for a slight breeze that caused trash to move through the maze of abandoned cars.
"I don't think it's a good idea to stay here long," Seth murmured. He pulled up slowly to the curb next to one of the gas stations. He carefully put the car in park. "Melissa, Roman and I are going to get some gasoline. Can you look around and see if there's anything nearby we can take with us?"
Melissa nodded as she unbuckled her seatbelt. "Should we tell Dean so he doesn't freak out if he wakes up and sees that we're not in the car?"
Seth shook his head. "We shouldn't be more than ten minutes. Let's hurry up and get it over with."
The three got out of the car, silently closing the doors behind them. Seth and Roman got the stuff they needed out of the back, while Melissa made sure she had her gun and knife, along with an empty backpack for carrying anything she found.
She followed them closer to the empty cars, feeling extremely on edge. She peered into one next to her, trying to see if there was anything useful. She gagged as she realized there was a dead person trapped inside. At least she hoped it was dead. She wasn't going to open the door to find out.
She made her way to the next car, which had nobody in it. She pushed the release button on the trunk, which went up with a squeak.
Seth and Roman looked up in concern for a moment to see if she was okay before going back to their task. She grimaced as she realized there was mainly photo albums and clothing in the back, and none that would fit her or any of the men. She left the car behind, looking around to see if she could find a truck; she always remembered seeing trucks with NRA stickers on them. And where an NRA member truck was, a gun was sure to follow. She sighed in frustration as she spotted none immediately nearby. She let her eyes wander out a bit farther, searching more of the area.
She almost missed it when she spotted it; there was a truck lying on its side on the ramp coming off the southbound lane. Creeping forward, she made her way to Seth and Roman. "I'll be right over there," she whispered, pointing at the ramp.
The two men nodded with a whispered "Be careful." Melissa wound her way through the cars, her knife now drawn. The tension was starting to nag at her. She finally made it to the two door truck. The stuff from the bed of truck had spilled out on to the dirt by the side of the road. Melissa's eyes widened hopefully when she spotted an NRA sweatshirt among a pile of clothing. Could she be so lucky?
Making her way to the front of the truck, she saw that the windshield had been kicked out. She peered inside, and not seeing any zombies, slowly edged closer. Leaning inward, she looked at the interior of the truck. She looked down at where the door was resting on the ground, where most of the items from the inside had tumbled to. She sifted through the mess of cigarette ashes and food wrappers. There was nothing.
She almost fell over as she leaned in trying to get to the glove box, the only form of storage she could see. Popping it open, she sighed when she found only papers. She looked up at the seats with a frown. They looked suspiciously like the ones in her father's truck, and if they were… She carefully squeezed inside, leaning forward, grabbing the back of the seat and hesitantly pulling forward. The seat folded down, not quite revealing what she was hoping for. There was no gun, but… squinting to see in the faint light, she thought she noticed boxes on the side resting on the ground. She reached forward and grabbed one of the boxes, almost squealing in glee as she realized it was a box of ammo. It didn't mean that it was the ammo for her gun, but there was the possibility. She started quickly putting the boxes in her backpack, figuring that she could leave them if she found out they weren't useful. After packing up the boxes she also found a gun cleaning kit, which she hastily grabbed. They were going to need that if they wanted to keep the guns in working order.
She was carefully backing her way out of the shattered windshield when she heard something that set her heart to racing. She hastily backed out of the truck, slicing her hand on some of the shards of glass still stuck in the frame.
Peering around the truck, she saw something moving on the highway, coming southbound in her direction. Realizing it was a car, her nerves were almost soothed until she recalled the last time they'd met up with other people. "Fuck!" she muttered, her heart pounding. She raced over to Seth and Roman, trying not to make too much noise. "Seth, Roman!" she hissed.
They had just finished their task when they looked up. "Shit, what happened to your hand?" Seth asked.
Melissa looked down to see her hand dripping blood. "It doesn't matter. We've got a bigger problem."
"What?" Roman asked worriedly.
"There's a car coming southbound right now. And I have no idea whether or not they intend to just pass by."
"Fuck!" Seth looked like he wanted to slam his hand down on the car next to him in anger, but he managed not to. He, like Melissa, had obviously made the quick association of unknown people being a danger.
"What do we do?" Melissa asked.
"We've got two options: get in the car and get the hell out of here or hide," Seth muttered. "And we need to refuel the car before we can go, or we're not getting anywhere."
Melissa glanced at the Suburban. "If we hide, what about Dean?"
The sound of the engine got louder in the silence.
Glancing at the exit ramp, Roman said, "We don't have a choice now. We need to hide."
Seth and Roman grabbed the gas cans, hurrying to a hiding place under a nearby semi-truck.
Melissa ducked underneath a Prius parked by the curb in front of the Suburban, praying that the car would just pass the ramp by and continue down the I-5.
As the sound of the engine grew closer, she knew she wasn't going to get her wish, and then she saw the tires of the car pull up on the entrance ramp.