She put on her sunglasses and gingerly climbed up on the bike behind him, the heavy backpack strapped to her back like a boulder threatening to topple her at any moment. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
He looked back over his shoulder. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“I don’t see how it would be all that fun.”
“You’ll love it.”
“I truly doubt that.”
“Okay, can I be honest? I just wanted to be the one with my arms around your waist, at least once.”
She laughed over the dirt bike’s engine. “I knew there was an ulterior motive.”
“Think about it?”
“No.”
“You’re no fun.”
He turned back and gunned the throttle.
He aimed the bike out of the parking lot and back onto the feeder road. He turned onto the on-ramp, back up to Highway 59, sticking to the shoulder to skirt around a parked semi-truck that had clogged up the entire single lane. There was a light breeze, but the loud cough and sputter of the bike’s engine was the only unnatural sound for miles.
They progressed slowly up the highway, the glut of cars forcing them to travel anywhere from twenty to twenty-five miles per hour. Even on the dirt bike, which had maneuverability on its side, they had to travel slowly. It wasn’t just the cars, it was all the debris of humanity — clothing, boxes, electronics — that people had tried to take with them when they fled. It had never occurred to her just how much went into keeping the city clean until those services vanished overnight.
After about an hour of travel, Tony lifted his hand in the air, indicating that he needed to stop. He turned onto an off-ramp and pulled into a gas station.
The store had covered windows, so they didn’t bother to scout it out.
He parked the bike between a beat-up red pick-up truck and a black SUV that looked more expensive than all three years of her medical school tuition combined. The vehicle had chrome wheels and golden trims along the sides and front. She peered into the semi-tinted windows at the small LCD TVs dangling from the ceiling and state-of-the-art Blu-ray players embedded in the back of the front seats.
“We should take this SUV,” she said to Tony, who was already crouched next to the truck with his siphoning setup. It was really just a green garden hose that he had sliced down to five feet. It was crude, but effective.
“Too much bling. I don’t want to get carjacked,” he said.
She chuckled. “You think the Blu-ray players run on batteries?”
“They’re probably hooked up to the SUV’s battery.”
“Maybe we can use it as a battering ram. You know, just push cars out of the way.”
“Is this a joke? Is this you being funny?”
“I am funny.”
“Not really, no.”
She made a face, and he grinned back.
He stuck his end of the hose into the dirt bike’s gas tank and stood back, spitting out the taste of gasoline. “You know, there’s an easier way to do this.”
“How?”
“My dad used to have a cheap hand pump — probably about ten bucks. It had a plastic pump that you attached two hoses to and all you had to do was pump it to get the gas flowing from tank to tank. Hardware stores sell them.”
“Maybe we should try to find one.”
He seemed to think about it, then shook his head. “Nah. The disgusting taste of gasoline aside, it’s not worth the effort. And those stores are huge. Who knows how many of them are inside.”
She nodded. The idea of going into a big, sprawling warehouse store left her feeling queasy.
The gas pumped slowly between the two vehicles, and the slurp-slurp of the gas sloshing through the hose reminding her of something else.
She pushed the thought away. “I guess I should learn how to drive it. The dirt bike, I mean.”
“Ride it,” he said.
“What?”
“You don’t drive a dirt bike, you ride one.”
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Once we get to the countryside, I can teach you.”
“I assumed you wanted to teach me before that. You know, so you can put your hands around my waist and all.”
“That’s true, but I don’t feel like swallowing more gasoline until I absolutely have to.”
“Your loss.”
She picked up the backpack and slipped it on. She felt him looking at her, and she glanced over her shoulder and caught his eyes.
He smiled, and she smiled back.
It took them a couple more days, but they finally made it out into the countryside by the end of the second day. Once they cleared Humble, a small city just outside Houston, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way, with the highway opening up and a startling drop in the number of cars. Tony was able to crank the throttle up to thirty and, at some spots, forty miles per hour.
They finally stopped in the city of Cleveland, which had no resemblance whatsoever to the Ohio city. This one was smaller by a few million residents. They took shelter along the highway in a small mom-and-pop diner called Teddy’s, parking the dirt bike outside, squeezed between two trucks.
There was no couch, so they slept on the hard floor, but they were used to that.
When she woke in the morning, he was already outside in the parking lot siphoning gas from one of the trucks. She spent some time looking over Teddy’s, hoping to find food that hadn’t gone bad.
She stocked up on chips from the racks, warm bottled water, a couple of Gatorade bottles, and some soft drinks from the warm freezers in the back. On her way out, she grabbed some Cheetos and Baked Lays chips.
Outside, Tony was watching the gas squirting from the truck into the dirt bike’s tank. He looked up as she came out of the store. She tossed him one of the Cheetos and a Gatorade.
He attacked them with a big satisfied grin on his face. “My favorite,” he beamed, showing stained orange teeth.
“I can see that.”
She walked to the edge of the parking lot and glanced briefly at the highway to her left, then looked northward toward their destination. Unlike in Houston, Highway 59 eventually leveled out until it was almost flat with the ground.
“What’s out there?” she asked.
“Hunting, fishing, farming.”
“You know how to do any of those things?”
“Fishing. And maybe a little hunting.” He slid the golf club out of a sheath he had made and attached to the side of the dirt bike, then took some swings. “You haven’t seen real hunting until you’ve seen it with golf clubs.”
“Nine iron, right?”
“Yup.”
“Your expansive golf knowledge continues to impress me.”
“I know, right?” He grinned. “Anyone can hunt with rifles. With golf clubs? Now that takes some serious skills.”
“I could probably do some farming,” she mused.
“Yeah?”
“Probably.” She shrugged. “It can’t be harder than medicine, right?”
He chuckled. “We’ll see.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe that you believe you can do it.”
“Smart ass,” she smirked.
They continued up Highway 59, her arms around his waist, face turned into the wind. Far from the city, she felt free, as if they were getting a second chance out here in the wide-open spaces. There were walls of trees on both sides of the road, and she wondered what lay beyond.
Farms? Houses? Sanctuary? The possibilities were endless.
She enjoyed these moments, riding on the road with Tony, just the two of them in a world that didn’t seem alive anymore. She tightened her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his back. He turned his head slightly, probably curious by the extra show of physical contact.