Page 4 of Haunted By the Shadow of Death

“The gas stations used to be refilled. Even with only ten percent of the population left, they still need it for generators and motorcycles like us. It’s going to get worse as it goes bad.”

“Gas goes bad?”

“Everything goes bad given enough time. Sometimes I forget how young you are.” Rastin laughed.

And when the gas was gone? I might not have known about the shelf life of gas, but anyone who’d seen the white, crusty stuff on the end of a battery knew that wasn’t going to work out so well. Not to mention, how were we going to charge them? We’d better get to some mills fast, but then what? A battery factory? We didn’t have enough people to sustain the kind of infrastructure and manufacturing we’d had.

“Now what?” Sometimes I spend my days just trying to survive. Other times, when I got stuck standing still for a few minutes like now, reality hit hard. This wasn’t a bump in the road or something we’d get past. This was life.

He waved his free hand, as if we were all just throwing darts in the dark. “Hell if I know. I might have lived longer than you, but this end-of-the-world shit? This is everyone’s first rodeo.”

“Let’s get on the road again,” Kicks called out.

As the sun set, the smiles and fist bumps of the morning were quickly shifting to groans and frowns. I leaned against an old Caddy, my hands shoved in my leather jacket, hoping no one would notice my skin was about frozen. Kicks was attempting to fill our tank for the fifth time in three hours. Several others worked their way along the highway to see if there was any other gas to top off with.

Crackers walked over. “The gang is getting a bit rough around the edges. They want to know if we’re stopping at Bri’s.”

His attention flickered to me, and back off me even quicker. That was all it took to tell me that somehow I was a deterrent to us stopping.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Kicks said, not looking at me.

Crackers was visibly struggling to not look at me now. “The gas situation is worse than we expected. Bri’s would be a nice break, since we’re going to have to stop somewhere at this rate.”

Evangeline walked over, her ears perking up at the mention of Bri’s. “We’re only an hour or so from there,” she said, giving that same glance in my direction that Crackers had.

“Is there some reason I’d be a problem? Do they not like humans? I can crash somewhere else for the night.” I looked at Crackers and Evangeline and then settled on Kicks, and his body visibly tensed at the suggestion.

“No, being human isn’t an issue,” he said. “We’ll head to Bri’s. It makes the most sense.” Seeing the looks shooting back and forth, there was clearly some issue no one wanted to discuss with me.

Crackers turned around, announcing to the group, “We’re going to Bri’s.”

There were a few nods, but it seemed as if everyone had already been listening in to the conversation, as usual.

Kicks finished up with the gas, not saying anything, but I wasn’t walking into this situation blind. If the whole pack had to overhear our conversation, I didn’t care. They already seemed to know more than me anyway.

He tucked the hose into a bag on the bike. “There’s a creek nearby. Do you need to refill your canteen and freshen up?”

“Yes, I do.” I grabbed my full canteen, hoping no one else decided to join us.

We weren’t that far from the group but enough to gain some privacy, especially with the sounds of water. I knelt by the creek, my back to him as I was deciding on the best angle of attack. He hit me with the true problem before I had to ask.

“I have some history with the female alpha over there,” he said.

I froze, but just for a second. I was quick to recover, dipping my canteen in the stream as his eyes seemed to be trying to take in every little twitch.

Was this a recent history or something from a decade ago? Was I walking into the pack of a current girlfriend and yelling, “Surprise, look who’s here?”

“Was it like a one-night stand kind of deal?” Please, let that be the case. I’d just barely gotten out of a messy situation, and I didn’t want to walk into another. It was enough to make me want to write off getting involved with anyone ever again, no matter how much they might ooze sex and testosterone. I was at my limit for messy.

“It was more than that, but nothing too serious.”

I was on my feet, trying to appraise that answer. There was a lot of room for interpretation, but even the middle ground made me feel like a chipmunk trying to swallow a cantaloupe whole.

“So you were at least like…” I couldn’t get the word out. It was just the idea of another woman touching him that seemed to make my brain misfire.

“Dating her?” he offered with a shrug.

“I was trying to think of a different word, but yes, I guess if that fits.” That word was the cantaloupe that was choking me. “Dating” sounded a lot more intentional, and we were definitely getting into messy territory now.

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