Free The Nightworld by Jack Blaine Page B

much as he can. He could have shot me that first day and taken the supplies in the Holzer house for himself.
    “You’re doing the right thing, Gus. I’ll be fine.”
    He nods, a little too eager to agree. “I know you will be. Just stay off the roads, and keep one of the guns at the ready.”
    I pick up my backpack and shrug it onto my shoulders. It’s pretty heavy now, packed with everything we could think of that might prove important. I slip on some gloves and it’s time to go.
    “Well.” I’m not sure how to say good-bye. “Take good care of Tank.” I rub the top of the dog’s head. He’s been watching us all morning, getting my stuff ready to go. He knows something’s up.
    Gus doesn’t seem to know what to say either. He keeps his eyes on Tank. “He’s gonna miss you.”
    I slide open the door to the backyard. One step, two steps, and I’m outside. I turn, and before I close the door behind me I take one last look: Gus and Tank are watching me with the same look in their eyes.
    “See ya.” And I shut the door.
    Before I even get to the back gate, the door opens. Tank flies out of it and runs to me, dancing around my feet and snuffling, almost panicked.
    “He wasn’t having none of it.” Gus leans out the door, tosses me a bag of dry dog kibble. “Probably for the best. I’d just have ended up eating him when things got tough.”
    I know he’s joking, or at least I think he is, but people are doing it. The latest news broadcasts—before they stopped altogether two nights ago—were brutal. One clip showed the head of a golden retriever, tossed in a gutter like garbage. There’s no food in parts of the country, and people are desperate.
    I raise a hand to Gus, in a final farewell. He nods.
    “Only one thing I know about life, son. And that is this: don’t ever give up. It’s always darkest right before the dawn.” He turns and disappears inside the house. The sliding door closes. That’s that, I guess.
    Tank is ecstatic, pushing his nose against my hand and leaning on my legs. I kneel and try to hold him still. I shove the kibble into my pack’s outside pocket. It’s not much, but I can share my food too.
    “Okay, Tank. But you better do what I tell you.”
    A peek out the gate reveals an empty street. I slip through and latch the gate behind me. And I’m on my way.
    We walk quickly, heading down toward the main road. Everything is strange looking. The bushes and grass all look like the backyard did—gray and flattened. It’s cold enough that I feel every breath I take as it enters my lungs. My eyes are tired within the first twenty minutes from straining to see in the dark. Gus said the best way to go would be to follow the freeway, as long as I just use it as a guide and stay off it.
    Once we hit the main road out of the suburbs, it’s not long until we reach an on-ramp. I walk halfway up and try to scope out the empty freeway. No abandoned cars out there that I can see, not like the descriptions of snarled roads across the country that news reports were showing. I stand still, listening for any sound, looking for any sign that people are around, but I see and hear nothing. Tank sticks right with me, as though he’s heeling. I wish I could stay on the freeway because the road lights are still working, spilling isolated pools of illumination every two hundred feet or so. It’s comforting, and I bet it would make travel faster too.
    I’m standing on the edge of the on-ramp, weighing the odds, when a green station wagon comes careening toward me from the freeway, veering crazily. Tank and I barely have time to throw ourselves into the scrub brush before it rolls right over the spot where we were standing. I hear the sound of impact and the screech of twisting metal. Before I can get up to see what the car hit, another car comes racing down the ramp just as fast as the first. Breaks squeal as the car stops suddenly. The motor idles. I risk peeking over the tops of the bushes Tank and