Free After Days (The After Days Trilogy) by Scott Medbury

though.”
                  “We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said. Worcester was a real city, with a little over two hundred thousand people it was the second largest city in New England after Boston. We had sort of come to an unspoken agreement that big cities were to be avoided, that's where we figured we'd be most likely to run into the Chinese military. “If we have to go through we will,” I shook my head. “But maybe something else will come up before we get there.”
                  “Sounds like a plan, man,” Luke said, closing the Atlas. “I think I'll hold onto this, it could come in handy.”
                  “We should grab another one too,” Brooke said, “A backup never hurts.”

 
     
     
    6
     
     
     
                  The sun rose the next morning to find us preparing to leave the Walmart. We were all packed, each of us had a full backpack and bike baskets loaded with supplies.
    “Where is Luke?” Ben asked
    “I think he went to the bathroom,” Sarah replied. “Here he is.”
    Luke emerged from one of the aisles holding up a box triumphantly. “Crossbow,” he said and knelt on the floor and began to rip open the cardboard packaging. At first I thought it was a toy, but when he pulled out the camouflage patterned weapon, I saw that it was indeed real, as were the short arrows or bolts or whatever they called them. He slung the crossbow over his shoulder and secured the Velcro belt of eight holstered arrows to his thigh. 
    “Where did you find that?” Ben asked, “I could do with one of those too, the bows are too big and clumsy to take with us.”
    “Sorry, this was the last one. It was tucked behind a counter. All the shelves were cleaned out, probably in the panic after the outbreak. Here, you can have this though.”
    He handed Ben the shotgun. The English boy took it gingerly. “Don’t worry, the safety is on.”
    I wasn’t sure about giving up a firearm for what was essentially a medieval weapon, but I could tell from the loving way he handled it that Luke wouldn’t be persuaded to give the crossbow up. We got started not long after.
    A mile down Highway 102, it crossed the Quaker Highway which would lead us, after another half mile or so, to the Providence-Worcester Turnpike. This would give us a fairly straight shot across the semi-rugged and forested southern Massachusetts countryside. It was cold and overcast as we left the Walmart parking lot, weaving our bikes between the silent cars that littered the highway. It started to snow before we reached the turnpike.
                  “This could be some tough sleddin', boss,” Luke said, pedaling up beside me. “Bicycles can be hard to ride in the snow.”
                  “Nothing we can do about it now,” I replied. “If it gets too bad we'll find someplace to stop until it lets up.”
                  “What if it doesn't let up till spring?” he asked. “It's still January after all.”
                  “Heck, I don't know... maybe we'll come across a place with Snowmobiles.”
                  The snow did let up before it started sticking to the road, but that conversation with Luke kept playing on my mind. Somehow, I was beginning to feel responsible, not only for myself, but for our entire ragtag little group. What if I led them astray? The thought nagged at me as we rode. It was nineteen miles from where we got on the turnpike to the edge of Worcester, and we planned on staying on it the entire way. That's not the way it turned out though.
                  We had only been on it for three or so miles when Brooke's keen eyesight caught something coming towards us down the freeway. We had just passed an off and on ramp, so we turned our bikes around and high tailed it back. We sped down the ramp and hid our bikes in the bushes near the underpass.
    From the bushes w e watched the