Dark Days Rough Roads by Matthew D. Mark Page A

quick.
The occasional conspiracy theory arose, but he couldn’t stomach that. They
needed to be taking care of business, not guessing what may have happened.
    Time was
close enough and he keyed the mic once again. “Kaybear and Bobily, on track,
all safe, reply one word.” One yes came from Kayla and there was nothing but
silence. Haliday repeated himself and said, “Bobily?” He almost laughed
whenever he heard that nickname. Her grandfather was an immigrant and his
English broken. He could not pronounce Beverly and it came out Bobily. It was
that simple.
    A third
try, “Bobily?” His dad answered, “She’s in the bathroom.” Haliday just
chuckled. Next was his mom’s voice. “Sorry, I was in the bathroom. Dad wasn’t
sure he should answer.” Haliday was thinking that if anyone was listening, they
were probably laughing about now.
    “Anything
bad happening?” he asked. His mom said “no,” Kayla said “yes.”
    “SITREP?”
He had briefed them all on some basic acronyms and jargon to make things
easier. SITREP is situation report. Kayla answered quickly. “Mike is home, but
beaten bad.” Haliday thought great, he knew it would be hard to just get in and
go without assuring her that her mom and Mike would be ok. “I’ll check it out
when I get in, I’m out.”
    He was
trying to think of how to handle that when he got there and couldn’t come up
with a plan yet. To take his mind off from it, he figured he would scan the ham
for traffic. He looked down at the radio and started changing frequencies when
he heard a loud horn. He shot straight up and then swerved back into his lane.
He had barely missed hitting an old tractor pulling a large flatbed cart behind
it heading the opposite direction he was.
    “Damn,”
he said, "I didn’t expect that." It was later in the morning and he
didn’t count on any moving vehicles for the most part. Of course he knew that
some would still be running, but this old John Deere wasn’t what he expected.
He looked in the rearview mirror and saw the flatbed had about a dozen people
on it.
    No idea
what that was all about and he didn’t really care. He passed by an old motel and
started to laugh again. The old B-rated horror movie Motel Hell crossed
his mind. Maybe the farmer had a new crop he harvested. Then he stopped smiling
and thought, man, that would not be good. He could hope people wouldn’t resort
to that. That was just wrong in too many ways.
    He knew
when people got hungry they got desperate, and there were going to be a lot of
desperate people in a matter of weeks. Eventually some were going to snap and
cross the boundary. He didn’t want to think about it. He glanced at his binder,
flipped the page again and noticed he was in Ohio now. Pretty soon he would
start a westward course. It would still be pretty much the same terrain and
land.
    The next
major obstacle was a small city named Bryan. Population was under 9,000 and its
major business was Dum Dum suckers and candy canes, along with Etch A Sketch.
There’s one that will make a comeback, he thought. Hey kids, can’t get that
X-Box working, well don’t you worry, the old fashioned Etch A Sketch is back
and it’s bad. About another five miles would put him smack dab outside of the
downtown area.
    He slowed
down and brought the vehicle to a stop. After the Ride Share escapade, he
wasn’t taking chances. He stepped out and grabbed a pair of binoculars out of
the console. He eyeballed the road ahead and thought he saw a roadblock. He
grabbed his thermos and poured a quick cup of coffee. He drank it and kept
peering down the road. After finishing the coffee, he stepped over to the
shoulder of the road and took a quick leak.
    Finished
with his business, he got back in the truck and slowly moved forward about 20
miles an hour. The closer he got the more it looked like a roadblock. Here we
go again, he was thinking. He got a little closer and realized it was a train
stopped on the tracks and not a