Free At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) by John Hennessy

beside me.
    I eyed her. “You’ve got a plan.”
    “I’ve got a plan,” she said. “Don’t worry;
I’ll get us to Pasadena. All of us.”
    “I wish I had a head like you,” I
confessed.
    She blushed. “The plan is to find the
nearest on-ramp, find an SUV on the second tier, and take that all
the way, under cover. The second level has always been the least
driven, so we won’t have to worry about so much traffic to bump out
of our way. We’ll be in Pasadena in a day or two if we drive
without stopping.”
    I nodded. “Sounds like a plan, IQ.”
    “Tortilla and I will gather everything up,
you rest there.”
    “Nah, I’m all right.” I clambered to my feet
with the aid of the bus. I was still holding the towel with puke
chunks, so I tossed it towards the front of the bus, and we crawled
through the hatch in single file.
    Félix helped Jacob up and out the bus. We
removed everything that was still intact and started to consolidate
our inventory. I looked over our supplies. “So we have water
bottles; some food; cooking equipment and utensils, including a
stove we found at the sporting goods store; medicines; a whole
backpack filled with aluminum foil; some towels, blankets, and
toilet paper; and a whole duffel with knives, guns, ammo, arrows,
and saws.”
    Maggy leaned against the haft of her axe,
the head resting in the soil. “Too bad we left the other duffels;
we might need more pots than this.”
    “If we do, we’ll find some more along the
way,” Félix said. “We’ll find what we need.” He took an ammo box
that read 9MM PARABELLUM on the lid and started to reload his gun
the way Jacob had showed him a few minutes before.
    “And make sure the damn safety is on,” Jacob
told Félix. “You don’t want to shoot one of us. That goes for all
of you.” He shifted his narrow gaze on to us.
    “So how is everyone feeling?” Maggy asked,
changing the subject. “I have some big ugly bruises on my waist,
shoulders, well everywhere.”
    “The cut on my hand is all right since I put
bandages on it. Other than that, I have a few pretty bad bruises on
my shoulders, arms, back, butt, and legs, but I’ll survive,” I
reported.
    “Pretty much the same for me,” Félix
said.
    Jacob looked the worst out of the four of
us. He was completely scraped up, bandages all over him, thanks to
Maggy. “I’m not sure I can walk.” Jacob was sitting against the bus
and tried standing to his feet.
    “If you can’t, we’ll support you,” Félix
told him.
    “What about the weight from all the bags? We
can’t support him and carry all this stuff,” I said. “I’m not that
strong, and I’ll get too tired long before we find an on-ramp.”
    Jacob took a step and collapsed. “Yeah, we
need a new plan.”
    “Tortilla and I can go find a ride and drive
back here,” Maggy said. “Jelly, stay here and keep him safe.” She
pointed at Jacob.
    I nodded. “That’s not safe or smart, but
neither is leaving this stuff behind.”
    They left, taking only three guns and the
replica axe.
    Jacob sat back down, bent over as he ate
some jerky. “Why do you let her call you that?”
    “Call me what?”
    “Jelly. Why do you let her call you
Jelly?”
    I stared at him, my mind blank. “Don’t know
. . . it’s endearing.”
    He laughed. “No, it’s not. She’s calling you
fat, bro. She’s not calling you the love of her life.”
    “What do you know? It’s endearing, just
leave it at that.”
    He didn’t say another word on the subject.
“You want me to show you how to load the shotgun?”
    I was holding the weapon with both hands,
across my stomach. “Yeah, unless you want the gun.”
    “No, I found these in the store.” From a bag
next to him, his own bag, he grabbed a pair of submachine guns. “I
found these OMP2s while you were getting the stove. Probably just a
couple of years old.”
    My mouth gaped. “That’s the gun from Death
Squad.” I had never seen one in real life.
    “The Optimum Machine