Eventually a vehicle picked him up. It must have hit the end of the road and turned around, because it was headed the same way he was, away from the hole. The driver was headed back to LA, unable to go to Sunnydale, and he just agreed that he would go there too.

"You're not one for words are you?" The driver asked.

"Guess not. Don't have much to say." He continued looking out the window at the world whizzing past him.

"Well, you must have been in that earthquake back there. Can't expect too many survivors out of something like that. Surprised, never heard anything about it on the news."

The driver finally gave up on talking to him. He decided that his passenger must be shell-shocked after an event like that. After an hour of silence the passenger spoke.

"Do you have anything to drink?"

"Yeah, on the back seat is a cooler, grab yourself something. I bet you are thirsty, what with all that walking, and the quake."

"Yeah, I suppose so." He leaned over the seat and began to rifle through the ice. It was cold on his hands. It melted from the heat he projected. He knew this felt alien, strange, but he was not sure why. He grabbed a bottle of water and chugged it down.

"So, do you have a name? I'm Barton Smith, but my friends call me Bart."

"I really don't know. I think it might be William, but I can't quite remember, a lot of things are only bits and pieces. I can't quite put it all together."

"Understandably so, probably knocked your head pretty hard in that quake. Judging from the bruise on your head, I would bet that's the case."

William pulled down the visor in front of him to look in the mirror. He looked like hell, or like he had been to hell. The left side of his forehead was purple and blue, with broken capillaries just under the skin. Just touching it made him wince in pain. The whites of his clear blue eyes were the only clean looking surface on his face. He was dirty, his shirt torn at the neck, his light brown hair a mess of curls. Light brown hair, that seemed out of place. It wasn't familiar. Then again, nothing much seemed familiar. All he could remember was her face.

"Do you have any forms of identification on you? That might help. You sound English, so maybe you have a passport or something like that."

English, yeah that sounded right. He was from England, he had come here years ago. He felt his pockets, but there was nothing in them. Bart gave up on questions again. He began driving faster. There was no one around for miles, this area so desolate not even the police would hunt down speeders.

" This day just keeps getting stranger, its like a bad trip! Look man, a school bus in the middle of the night!"

William looked up, he saw a girl in the back window, crying. She looked out the window and it felt like her eyes burned straight through him. The recognition was instant. That was the girl in his memory! The one he remembered. He put his hand to the glass as they passed and turned to watch her as long as he could. Bart passed the bus before he could think to say anything. Should he make Bart stop and let him out? Surely those people would know who he was and stop for him. What if they don't remember him either? What if they didn't recognize him? He turned around and looked back; the bus grew smaller and smaller as Bart accelerated. He wanted to reach out his hand, he wanted this car to stop, he wanted to touch her face, instead he turned around and slumped down in his seat. This was going to be a long night.

***********************************************************************

It was strange. It felt like the rest of the world had just disappeared. Maybe they didn't stop the apocalypse. Maybe the Hellmouth in Cleveland opened up and finished the job the one in Sunnydale couldn't. They hadn't passed a car or any signs of life for miles. A while back she had seen a snake warming itself on the road, in the lane opposite of their own. But it wouldn't surprise her if the snakes survived the apocalypse, I mean they were creepy enough, and plus lots of evil things took the shape of snakes so why not let snakes live, right?

The tears sort of flowed on their own now. She didn't sob or heave, the tears just trickled out of her eyes as they felt. Tears of exhaustion, tears of relief, tears of joy, tears of anguish, they didn't differentiate, they all just flowed together into a salty river down her cheeks.

She was surprised when after so long alone on the road, a set of headlights began coming up on them. She tried to wipe the tears away, and look up, the lights were almost blinding after all this darkness. But through them she could see something, the car quickly made advances to pass them, but she could see it, or him.

"Spike!" She suddenly cried out. She put her hand to the window as the car started to pass. She got up and ran to the front of the bus. "Giles, put the pedal to the metal, Spike was in that car! Come on!"

"Buffy, you need to rest. Spike's, well, I suppose he is dead. There is no way he could have survived that, even as a vampire. The fact is it was daylight out when it happened, so even if he made it through he would have hit the light, and well, become a large pile of dust."

"No Giles, that was him, I know it was him. I could feel it. Isn't that creepy?"

"Buffy, go rest, you are delirious. We should be in LA in just about an hour. Then we can try to sort this all out."

"You never believe me." Buffy muttered under her breath as she turned around to head back to her seat.

"I do believe you, but this bus doesn't go much faster than this, so we really have no choice. We will look into it once we get to LA."

Buffy didn't turn around, she just kept walking. She didn't believe Giles, but it was nice to hear him try. She started to doubt herself. Maybe he was right, she was just seeing things because she was so tired. She started to think maybe Faith had a good idea when she mentioned sleeping for a week. Maybe she'd do that, just lay in bed crying, letting it all out. She had eight years of her life, 2 deaths, 3 loves, and countless moments of terror behind her, it was a lot of emotion she just couldn't contain anymore. Maybe she would lay in there and have Angel bring her breakfast in bed. No, she knew that was a bad idea, post-cookie dough speech she knew things between them were undeniably changed, but not changed in a good way. Both of them needed to move on, go forward, get over it. Breakfast in bed wouldn't help that along. Besides the turning evil, her and Angel had a new point of contention between them, namely Spike. Spike was gone now, but she knew somehow that Angel would never forgive her or forget about her and him.