RecruitZ (Afterworld Series) by Karice Bolton Page A

the right. You?”
    “Same.”
    “So are you going to let me in on what you’re really doing here?” he asked, his voice low as we walked onto the street toward our cars.
    There were no streetlights so this section of roadway was quite dark until Preston turned on a flashlight.
    “Where were you hiding that?” I changed the subject.
    He grinned and pointed the way with the beam of light. “This is my truck. Let me walk you to your car.”
    His truck was an older model like mine, but I couldn’t tell the color, other than it was dark.
    “I have an old truck too. Not a big fan of the autodrivers.”
    “I’m not keen on depending on much of anything besides myself either,” he confirmed as he followed me to my truck. “We might actually have something in common after all.”
    I opened my door and turned around to face him. His eyes held the kindness I recognized that first night, and I wanted to trust him. I really did.
    But I couldn’t.
    Not yet.
    If ever.
    “Okay, well, follow me to town. My friend’s working the late shift at a great place with cheap food and even cheaper drinks.”
    “Sounds like my kind of place,” he said, slamming the metal door with a thud. He waved and walked back to his truck as I started the ignition and pulled onto the road, doing a U-turn.
    I passed by him as he switched his lights on, and he turned around to follow me. I flipped on the radio, hoping the images of Gavin’s brother would drift away as the music played. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, I was plagued with new feelings of grief and desperation. I had already mentally laid Peter to rest once. Seeing him here tonight drove my anxiety level through the roof. I was barely hanging on as it was, and now I was leaving tonight with many more questions than I’d arrived with.
    I drove down the long country road, passing by vacant home after vacant home, and every so often, my headlights bounced off the broken windows of the abandoned homes. I wondered if there’d ever be enough life on the planet to fill up the vacancies left by so many. If tonight had been any indication as to where humanity was headed, I’d guess no.
    Preston flashed his high beams at me, and I looked around in front of me to see what he was pointing to. I didn’t see anything except a turnoff leading to a private road. If he thought I’d turn off in the middle of nowhere with a man I barely knew, he had another thing coming. We passed by the road and he flashed them again. This time, I caught a blinking light off in the distance where the road led. Trying to make out what the structures were from the road, I slowed some and craned my neck as I passed them. They looked like water towers or silos of some sort. One more thing I could ask him over drinks, I supposed.
    Still on edge from the night’s events, I was relieved to see the first working stoplight in town. Even though I’d become somewhat of a hermit, I enjoyed the idea of civilization…from a distance. I turned right at the second light I hit and pulled into a busy parking lot. Preston parked his truck next to mine as I slid off my bench seat.
    “That’s the place,” I said, pointing across the street. It was a three-story brick building with apartments on top and a bar on the corner. There was a blue awning lit up by the floodlights that surrounded the entrance. It used to be a bank. But we needed fewer banks and more places to drink in recent times, or at least that’s what the governments believed. They actually had special loans specifically for bars.
    “Never been here before,” he said, walking over to me.
    “My treat,” I said, patting my pocket. “The sooner I get my winnings out of my pocket, the better I’ll feel.”
    He smiled at me and shook his head. “That’s not how it works. You’ll still feel like shit, even after you spend it all.”
    “Thanks for that,” I said, walking across the street.
    “Just sayin’.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Did you get a