Alive! Not Dead! by R.M. Smith Page A

of deads, either.  I figured with the bridge down, it halted all traffic, including the undead type.
    I walked for a long time.  There were no towns.  No gas stations.  It was a long flat dry stretch here as the road went northward out of Vantage.  A blue reflector sign told me a rest area was coming up.  I hoped that I might at least find a better type of transportation than my own two feet there.
    Sadly , there was only one vehicle.  It had 3 flat tires.  It looked like it had been parked there for a very long time in the last stall in the parking lot.  It probably had been there before the pole shift.
    I had to keep walking.
    It was 11 miles from the yacht to the small town of George.  On the road, I saw 10 cars total.  All of them had been abandoned on the side of the road.  The passengers were long gone.  Who knew what had happened to them.  Why would they leave their transportation behind? Why not stay in the car until they found somewhere safer? What had caused them to leave their cars? As I passed each car, I looked in them for anything I could use, but I didn’t see anything useful.
    My mind kept turning back to Tara.  I missed her terribly.  I would have done anything to have her back or be able to talk to anyone now.  I was so lonely.
    As I walked into town, a sign told me that the city of George was where the Grant County Sheriff’s Office was.  By now my feet were so tired.  Reading the sign put a little more speed into my step.
    There would be guns.  Ammo.  More protection than the tire iron I carried.
    It turned out to be a false hope.  The Sheriff’s office – as well as the entire town of George –had burned to the ground.  It looked like a raging grass fire had simply consumed the town.  The grass under my feet was blackened.
    Luckily there were no deads.  All of the people who had lived in the town were now gone or lying dead on the ground, burned.
    Where a re all of the people? Would a small town like this have a disaster shelter?
    I began to second-guess myself.  I wondered why I left the comfort of the yacht.  Why did I leave its safety? The conversation I had with the people at the military base had not been very clear.  They said they were safe, they said they had shelter, they said they had food, weapons; and they told me exactly where they were.
    It wasn’t the base that Tara and I had planned to go to originally.  This one was closer.  I wouldn’t have to go all the way to Spokane.
    Maybe all of the people were at the military base! It would make sense.  It would be safe for them there.  There would be food.  There would be weapons.
    Yeah but on the yacht, I didn’t need any weapons.  I was safe! Deads couldn’t swim.  I didn’t need to share the food - I had a hot shower! And now here I was, walking on this deserted highway with no shelter, no food, no shower, and no nothing.  I was in the open, a target for any hungry dead that might be just around the next bend in the highway.
    El even miles back to the yacht.  Thirty or more miles to the military base.
    “Ok,” I said to the burned out town around me.  “I’ll go to the next overpass.  If there’s nothing worth looking at past it, I’m going back to the yacht.”
    I didn’t get far.  Next to the highway a wooden bridge over an irrigation ditch had burned.  I could have easily continued down the highway, but my heart wasn’t in it.  I kept on thinking of the yacht and the soft bed and the warm shower and the safety of it.
    “Fuck it” I sai d.  I turned back to the yacht.

 
     
     
     
     
    THE ROAD TO RICHLAND
     
    Three miles later on my trek back to the yacht, I heard an approaching engine.  I turned to see a jeep coming my way.  There was a guy with a NYC baseball cap driving and a girl in a bikini top in the passenger seat.  There was another girl in the back seat wearing jeans and a yellow top.  They all looked to be in their mid to late twenties.
    “Yo!” the guy yelled