Free Dark Days Rough Roads by Matthew D. Mark

on her vomit and tried to spit it out, but just puked some more.
    She
walked a few feet away and opened her water bottle and rinsed her mouth out.
She was still dry heaving a bit and they moved a bit further away from the
body. Dawn said, “We need to go.”
    Her
sister looked at her and said, “You shot the guy to death.”
    “Well,”
she answered, “It was him or us, didn’t you see his knife? Let’s go,” she said
again.
    They
started walking again and no one said anything. Dawn kept thinking they should
have just let him take the bike. They didn’t know if he would use the knife or
not. He had pushed them around though. But was that enough, she wondered. All
she knew was her instinct at the moment led her to squeeze the trigger.
    They kept
walking the rest of the way, which was another mile and half home. They went
inside and opened the garage and put their gear and bikes in the garage and
then went into the house. They lit up some candles and went to work. They were
tired from the walk, but they were also exhausted from the encounter they had
just an hour ago.
    They
placed some large wooden dowels in the tracks of the windows and door wall,
made sure everything was locked and closed the shades. They all just fell
asleep right there in the living room. They would get up in the morning and
finish what needed to be done then. None of the three really slept well that
night.
    Right
around seven in the morning, Dawn jumped off the couch and ran to the front
window and looked outside at the racket. Her neighbor across the street had an
old Chevy Nova II that he used to take out on weekends and it used to really
make her mad. His routine was to start it, gun it a couple dozen times, then
leave it running for almost half an hour before he would leave. He had it
straight piped for no reason other than the sound, so there were no mufflers to
keep it quieted down.
    On her
weekends off, she preferred to sleep in, but was always woken up early by this.
She watched for a few minutes and noticed the guy and his wife were loading up
the old Chevy with suitcases and boxes. She remembered Haliday telling her that
if they were going to bug out to have everything ready beforehand. If they had
decided to take extra clothes, use good old army surplus laundry bags.
    The
reason behind the surplus laundry bags was that they were cloth, thus they were
flexible and with the odd shapes of trunks, they could mashed into the tighter
spaces to save room. The shapes of suitcases and boxes didn’t really make good
use of trunk and cargo spaces. Too much wasted room in his opinion. She wasn’t
about to tell the neighbor that though. Screw him. He probably didn’t have them
anyway, but trash bags would work.
    All those
weekends waking up at six in the morning were for nothing. They looked like
they were finished and he closed their garage door and got in the old Chevy.
Halfway down the driveway it stalled out. He tried to start it again, but no
luck. After a couple of minutes, he got out and opened the hood. He wiggled a
few wires, checked some connections on the spark plugs, got back in and tried
again, but no luck.
    He got
outside and was visibly upset and glanced toward Dawn, whom he saw standing in
the window. She had the biggest smirk on her face and obviously he saw it. “Oh,
is this amusing you?” he yelled. Dawn raised her hand, flipped him the bird and
then went back into the living room.
    That
actually felt good, she was thinking to herself. She couldn’t recall ever
giving anyone the bird and used to scowl at Haliday for doing so, which happened
quite regularly because Haliday suffered some of the worst road rage you could
imagine. On their trips to the ranges, inevitably someone driving along pissed
him off. He was quick to salute anyone he thought was deserving enough. A quick
toot on the horn made sure he had their attention.
    When she
walked back into the living room, her mother and sister were sitting there.
They just stared