Sometimes We Ran (Book 1) by Stephen Drivick

underwhelmed about my decision. I sensed more questions were going to follow. The truth is I really didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I had to get away from the hell back home. The cities were hell, absolute hell. I knew we had to get away from any dense areas of population to be safe if any safe areas still existed. There had to be people alive somewhere …anywhere. Claire and I started to walk.
    We walked in silence for about half an hour. I put a few feet between us on the road. I still didn’t entirely trust her. I thought it was good practice. In the past, I let other survivors get too close, and they tried to kill me. Usually it wound up with somebody getting hurt or dead. You couldn’t trust anyone.
    I wasn’t going to let someone I initially trusted to get to close to harm me. Not again.
    In the morning light, I got a good look at my new fellow survivor. Claire really was a little thing, only standing about five feet tall or so. I bet she barely weighed a hundred pounds. I wondered how she survived the initial outbreak. She looked pretty weak. She must have survived by going from one group of survivors to another. I wondered if she had any real skills at all. I hoped she wasn’t completely useless, because I really didn’t want to be a babysitter.
    Claire walked with a purposeful stride. She held her head up high, constantly scanning the road ahead. Once in a while, she shot a nervous glance in my direction. I guess she didn’t trust me either.
    Claire brushed some of her hair out of her eyes, and put it behind her ear. I thought the pink color was a little weird, but she was kind of attractive. She had a nice build; not much up top, but her back porch wasn’t too bad. I suddenly wished I were twenty years younger.
    Claire looked at me, and started to come to my side of the road. I silently prayed that she hadn’t caught me looking at her behind.
    She stepped a little closer so we could talk. “So, we just walk?”
    I breathed a little sigh of relief. She hadn’t caught me leering. “Yeah. We walk. Is there something else we could do?”
    Claire thought for a minute. “Well, how about some of these cars? I’m sure some of them still work. Look over there. That blue one over there looks good.” She pointed at a pale blue minivan with a huge dent in the side.
    “Cars are no good. They attract a lot of attention, and gas is a little scarce.”
    Claire didn’t let up. “How about bicycles?”
    “Nah. Bicycles are too much trouble. Tires go flat because you run over debris, and they get stolen all the time.” I tried a bicycle a few months back, but it had been a total disaster. One night, it disappeared, the victim of another scrounger on the road.
    Claire wasn’t done. “Motorcycles? Scooters? How about a horse?”
    “Scooters and motorcycles are still too loud. They attract too much unwanted attention. I think all the horses, uh, became food. Walking is quieter. Besides walking allows you to see what’s coming. It also allows you to run like hell if you need to.”
    “Oh. Just seems kind of slow.”
    Claire seemed to be in a hurry for some reason. Maybe it was because she was so young.
    We walked for a few more minutes taking in the details of our ruined civilization. “Hey, Claire, can I ask you something?”
    “Go ahead. I’m all ears, Tiger.”
    “Why are you calling me, ‘Tiger’?”
    She blushed a little. “It’s something I do. I nickname everybody. Stupid, huh?”
    “I didn’t say it was stupid.” I stopped to direct her through a knot of wrecked cars. “I was just wondering.”
    “Well sometimes I have trouble with names, so I use nicknames. Be glad I don’t call you what I called my last boyfriend.”
    We stopped walking for a second. “What’d you call him?”
    Claire started to giggle uncontrollably. “Pumpkin.”
    I pointed at her as we started walking again. “First rule if you travel with me. Don’t call me ‘Pumpkin’.”
    Claire was still laughing.