“Okay, so now what?” Edward asked.
Liddie stared at the blank monitor on the dashboard where the map had been. “Well, we sure are not going to be getting to Illinois any time soon.”
“And Laramie?” he asked. “Any chance we’ll find a way to continue on from there?”
“I don’t really know,” Liddie said. “It depends if someone has a vehicle we can buy with what little money we have, which I don’t think is likely. And that would only be if the residents are friendly to outsiders.”
“Do you have any reason to believe they wouldn’t be?”
“This is mid-country. No one is friendly to outsiders. But I can’t recall hearing about anything worse than normal from around here. I guess we really won’t know one way or the other until we actually make it there.”
“Do you think they would recognize me there?” Edward asked.
“No more or less reason than anywhere else,” Liddie said. “I don’t know. Is there anything you can do to make yourself look less like you?”
“Nothing more than what I’m already doing,” he said as he rubbed his chin. He hadn’t shaved since the escape from Stanford, but he only barely had any stubble. That was one of the bizarre little details of being a Z7, apparently. Before, he’d been the kind of person who could get five o’clock shadow half an hour after shaving. Now it took days before there was enough hair on his face to bother going over it with a razor.
“Guess it will have to be enough,” Liddie said. “Come on, let’s get going.”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Edward said, gesturing at the sky behind them. The sun was already low over the mountains.
“Maybe not,” she said. “For all we know, if we come in after dark they’ll mistake us for reanimated and aim for our heads. But what are we even going to do until then?”
“We’ve got a little bit of food left,” he said, “but maybe we should leave that until the morning. You know, make sure we’re as full as we can be before the walk. Thirty miles on foot is not exactly going to be easy.”
Liddie nodded. “So what then?”
“We should probably use the van again as shelter tonight, but for now it should be okay if we build a fire, shouldn’t it?”
“Won’t that attract reanimated?”
“I’ll be able to tell if any are coming, and maybe even get them to go away. Come on, what do you say? We can use it to keep warm for a while, maybe even find a stick we can sharpen and roast stale hamburger patties over an open flame.”
Liddie smiled. “Like they used to do back in your time when people went camping?”
“Yeah, just like that. Well, no, except for the hamburger patty thing. Not exactly traditional camping food.”
“Do you even know how to start a fire?”
“I know how to pretend I know how to start a fire. Does that count?”
Liddie laughed, and they both got out of the van to search the terrain for burnable wood. It wasn’t easy, but after some searching Liddie found the very old remains of a wooden fence that might have once marked the borders of someone’s property. They brought it back to the road and set it up on the shoulder, being sure to keep it far enough away from the grass to prevent a brushfire. Actually lighting it was a hassle. Edward remembered seeing people start fires in various outdoorsy ways on television and in movies, and he even had a vague recollection of some of the tips he’d been taught back when he was a boy in Cub Scouts, but none of it was easy. It took them both a long time of messing around with the wood and cussing it out before they finally got a moderate fire going. Liddie actually went as far to skewer one of the burgers, bun and all, on a stick they had found. She thought the idea was hilarious.
To Edward’s surprise, he couldn’t help but smile along with her. He had to admit it. This was actually kind of fun. For the moment they could forget why they were out here in the first place and all the bad things that had happened up until this moment. The CRS seemed like a long time ago, and all the obstacles that were still in their path felt far off. As they sat side by side in front of the fire, watching the sun vanish behind the Rocky Mountains while eating their ridiculous burgers-on-a-stick, Edward actually felt a little bit at peace.
“You want the rest of this?” Liddie asked as she pulled the final hamburger from her stick and fished the meat out from the well-done bun.
“Sure.” He took it and ate it slowly, staring all the while at Liddie as she licked ketchup from her fingers. She smiled at him and watched him right back as she ate the bun. They were both sitting cross-legged, and Edward suddenly became aware that she was close enough for their knees to touch. It gave him a little thrill to have her so close. She saw where he was looking and put a hand on his knee.
“Is this really what camping was like back then?” she asked.
“Kind of. I didn’t get to do it a lot. I’d always hoped to get out and do it more once Dana got a little older. Do people not do this at all anymore?”
“Far too dangerous,” Liddie said. “I wouldn’t dare sit out here in the open, in the dark, if you weren’t around to do that thing. Have you had to use it at all, yet?”
“A zombie moved by somewhere to the north of us a while ago,” he said. “But I think the wind was wrong for it to get a whiff of us.”
“It’s refreshing,” she said, “being away from all the people. Being alone.” Something about the soft way she said the words made him look into her eyes. She stared back, and Edward felt a flutter in his chest. He hadn’t felt anything like this since he’d first started dating Julia, that moment of anticipation when he thought a relationship was about to take a new, unexpected, yet welcome turn. She leaned closer, just enough to give him a hint at what she wanted, and he matched the movement. Closer together, so close, but Edward couldn’t quite make himself move across those vital last inches. He wanted to, he really did. The thought of Julia was still there, though. His wife, the one he’d never been able to even give a funeral.
Something about him must have given away his thoughts, because Liddie leaned away and the moment was broken. “You’re still not ready, are you?”
“For a moment there I thought I was. But I guess maybe I’m not.”
Liddie nodded and scooted a few inches away from him. Edward felt a small emptiness the instant she moved away. “Can I ask you something?” she asked.
“Go ahead.”
“What happens after we get to Winnebago?”
“I don’t know. Unless we can find some sort of ride in Laramie, that might just be a long time off yet.”
“Suppose its not. Suppose we luck out and get a vehicle and make it all the way to Winnebago by tomorrow night. What happens then?”
Edward shrugged. “We find this man and hope it’s not all some sort of weird trap, and hopefully he can give me some answers.”
“All right, assume that. We’re there, he has all the answers. And after that?”
He frowned. “Liddie, I’m not sure I get what kind of answer you’re looking for from me here.”
“We’ve travelled halfway across the country already. This is so far from anything else that I’ve ever done that I don’t have even the tiniest inkling what comes after that.”
“I guess I don’t either. This isn’t exactly common for either of us here. I don’t know. Maybe…find a place where I can resume something that looks like the way my life was before?”
“You can’t have your life from before. It’s gone. Just like mine. It’s not coming back.”
“Liddie, is that what this is about? Are you having regrets that you did this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. No. No, not regrets. I’m just scared.”