Chapter 13: In the Silence Between Checkpoints
Time: 7:14 A.M.
The next morning, they drove.
No destination. Just away.
The RV rolled through crumbling towns and hollow fields, the tires crunching over shattered glass and bone-dry gravel.
The farther they went, the less the world looked like it wanted to be remembered.
Road signs leaned like drunk ghosts.
The names of towns were painted over, crossed out, or simply… gone.
Civilization, what was left of it, had chosen to vanish in warning.
Spray-painted messages flared in bursts of red and black across garage doors and collapsed storefronts:
TAKEN.
SAFE ZONE = LIE.
TRUST NO ONE.
NOTHING STAYS DEAD.
Aria sat curled against the window, knees to chest, blanket draped around her shoulders. Her reflection blurred against the outside—two versions of herself bleeding into one.
One who wanted to believe they could still fix this.
One who was already starting to forget what "before" even meant.
"How far until we're safe?" she asked softly.
Selene didn't glance over. Her hands stayed steady on the wheel. Her gaze was fixed too far ahead, like she was watching something crawl over the horizon.
"That's not the question."
Aria turned toward her. "Then what is?"
A pause.
The light outside shifted—washed bone-white like smoke filtered through memory.
"How long can we stay human?" Selene said.
Aria didn't answer. She didn't know how.
—
Time: 12:41 P.M.
By midday, they reached the remnants of a military checkpoint.
The gate was rusted open. The security booth had collapsed inward, as if something inside it had detonated, not out. Floodlights hung by fraying wires, swaying in the dry wind like mechanical vultures. The silence was too complete—like the earth itself was holding its breath.
A sign remained, but just barely:
ZONE 4: QUARANTINE ENFORCED. AUTHORIZED CLEARANCE REQUIRED.
Someone had scrawled LIARS across it in thick, black ink. Beneath that, a handprint—too small to be an adult's.
Aria leaned forward. "You said this checkpoint was cleared."
"It was. Three days ago."
"Then what happened?"
Selene's mouth thinned. "They stopped reporting. That usually means they sealed it… and let it die."
"And the people?"
Selene's voice barely moved. "They became data."
Aria turned away. Her stomach twisted.
It was easier, she realized, to look at ruins than to ask what had made them.
—
Time: 6:18 P.M.
They found shelter in a place that still had a name—Dry Hollow.
The word was carved into the welcome sign in weathered stone. Someone had etched a warning below it in thick charcoal:
DON'T STAY AFTER DARK.
Even the birds had left this town behind.
Selene parked the RV behind an old diner, half-collapsed from fire damage. The rear storage room held. Dry. Cold. Enclosed.
Inside, they lit a single lantern. Ash lined the windowsills. The walls bore smoke scars.
On the floor—chalk markings: loops and crude arrows drawn in a frantic hand. Some kind of map.
Selene crouched beside it. Her fingers traced the edges with silent precision.
Aria opened a tin can they'd scavenged, sniffed it, and winced.
"Do you think anyone's still here?"
"No," Selene said without looking up. "Not alive."
Aria swallowed hard.
She didn't ask what that meant.
—
Time: 8:05 P.M.
They inventoried what little they had.
Water: three sealed jugs.
Ammo: twelve rounds, three blades.
Medical: two kits—one barely more than gauze and antiseptic.
Food: four days, if rationed like soldiers.
Aria sat on a crate, watching Selene move. Every motion deliberate. Controlled.
Like she'd done this all before.
She studied her quietly. The way her eyes scanned corners. The way her body never fully relaxed. The tension in her shoulders like she carried the whole world's weight—without asking it to help.
"Do you ever miss before?" Aria asked.
Selene didn't lift her head. "I miss who you were."
Aria blinked. "What was I?"
Selene finally met her eyes.
"You were the reason I kept going."
The words dropped into the room like a match into dry grass.
Neither of them moved.
And then the silence returned.
—
Time: 5:39 A.M.
They left Dry Hollow before dawn.
The road narrowed into foothills where the trees grew too thick, too close. Sunlight couldn't reach the ground, only dust.
The shadows here moved too quickly, as if they had somewhere to be.
Selene slowed the RV near an old riverbed, now dry and cracked like old bone.
Up ahead—another checkpoint.
This one was not abandoned.
A barricade of stripped cars blocked the road. Five soldiers in black tactical armor stood in formation. Rifles ready. Visors down.
A signal drone hovered like a steel insect, its eye glowing softly above the fog.
Selene killed the headlights. Coasted slowly.
One soldier stepped forward. "Papers," he barked.
Selene rolled the window down halfway.
"We're en route to Relocation Zone Nine," she said, calm as stone. "Cleared three days ago."
"Clearance code?"
"Delta-Seven-Echo."
The soldier stared. Then looked at Aria. Too long.
Selene's hand hovered near the gear shift.
The soldier nodded once. "Go."
They eased through.
Aria watched the soldiers vanish in the rearview.
"Why did that work?"
Selene's voice was a whisper. "Because he was scared."
"Scared of what?"
"What's in Zone Nine."
—
Time: 8:11 P.M.
They stopped for the night on a high plateau overlooking a canyon. Smoke curled in the air from fires still burning to the west.
Below them, the valley lay silent. Dark.
Untouched—for now.
Aria climbed onto the RV's roof, blanket wrapped around her, knees drawn close.
Selene sat beside her.
The wind tugged at their hair.
"What's going to happen to us?" Aria asked.
Selene didn't lie.
"Everything. Too fast."
Aria looked at her.
"Will you let it change you?"
Selene's voice was soft. "It already has."
They didn't speak again.
They just sat together.
Two shadows on the roof of a dying world.
, still breathing.