State of Emergency

“What time is it?” he asks, dropping my wrist.

I can’t help but notice that his hands are warm.

“Midnight,” I say, my teeth chattering. “It’s freaking cold up here.”

“It’s only going to get colder,” Chris replies, turning the key in the ignition. It takes the car a few turns to rumble to life. “You okay?”

I can’t seem to stop shivering and my head has started to pound.

“Headache,” I mumble.

Chris frowns and touches my forehead.

“You don’t have a fever,” he says.

“I’m not sick,” I answer. “I’m tense. The world just ended, remember?”

He flashes an amused smile as we back out of the bushes, back onto the road. It becomes concerning to me that all of the windows are covered in a fine layer of snow. The road is ghostly white. It’s so thin that it’s almost like paper, which means the roads will be slippery.

“Great,” I complain. “Snow. Fantastic.”

“What did snow ever do to you?”

“It made me cold.” I tuck my legs underneath myself, feeling like a popsicle. “Aren’t you cold?”

“It’s just a little snow.”

“Let me guess. You’ve probably walked uphill, barefoot for forty miles in the snow as a Navy Seal. You’re now impervious to cold weather.”

Chris releases a rich, pleasant laugh.

“That would have been a cakewalk compared to what I had to do,” he says.

 “And what did you do?” I ask.

“You don’t want to know.”

“No, I do.” I cup my hand around my ear. “I’m waiting.”

He smirks.

“I trained in San Diego at the Coronado Naval Air Station when I was eighteen. Two hundred boys go in and forty get to go onto the next level of training.”

“What are they, prejudiced or something?” I quip.

“Only the best get in,” he says, and I can tell by the way he’s smiling that he’s proud of his job.

“Have you been overseas?” I ask.

“Many times.”

“Where?” I lean forward. “I always wanted to travel.”

Chris sighs.

“I didn’t exactly have time to do a lot of sightseeing,” he says. “I’ve been on six tours since my first deployment. Iraq and Afghanistan for the most part.” His face darkens. “That was a couple years ago, though.”

“That explains your hippie hair,” I remark.

“Hey, I like my hair.”

“So do I, I’m just saying.”

Chris smiles again and I realize how much I like seeing him do so. I play a game with myself to keep my mind off the world’s seeming doom by seeing how many times I can make him smile or laugh. I manage to get him about five times in forty-five minutes. Not bad.

“It’s so cold,” I complain for the hundredth time. “Damn.”

Chris laughs — weird, because I wasn’t even trying to get him to do it.

“What’s so fu

“You haven’t been in snow much, have you?” he asks, rolling his eyes.

“No,” I huff. “Now I know why. It sucks.”

“Nah. It’s just different than what you’re used to.” He shrugs. “Then again, you are a city girl.”

I mutter something about him about being egotistical before rubbing my hands together. My head hurts sobad. It’s ridiculous. I grit my teeth and wrap my fingers around the roots of my hair at the crown. I pull on the hair enough to ease the pain in my head — a little trick I learned from those stupid online health forums on the Internet.

The Internet.Now a thing of the past.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks again.

“My head hurts,” I say, admitting it. “I think I have some pain meds in my backpack.” The headache is so painful that it hurts to blink. By the time I rifle through all the survival crap in my bag I am tearing the pain medication package open like someone possessed.

“Aren’t those children’s painkillers?” Chris remarks, seeing the happy face on the label.

“Yes,” I groan, chewing up the grape-flavored drug.

“Why not just buy the adult doses? It’s more effective.”

“I prefer the grape flavor.”

He cocks an eyebrow.

“Fine,” I admit. “I like the happy face on the label. Geez.”

Chris bursts into laughter, chortling on like I’m some kind of sitcom. Whatever. My head hurts and yeah, I like the happy face. I fling the bottle back into to the bag. I press my forehead against the freezing window, hoping it will act as the equivalent of an ice pack.

“I’m just going to rest for a minute,” I murmur, knowing I sound whiny.

I drop off to sleep after a few minutes. When I dream I have weird nightmares about driving down a road that never ends. Ironic. When I wake up it’s around three in the morning. Still dark. Still cold enough to make Frosty the Snowman wear a parka.

“Where are we?” I ask, yawning.

My head feels better thanks to the painkillers. Chris looks weary from all the driving and I consider offering to take his place. My brain feels kind of thick and foggy from the meds, so I decide to keep my generous offer to myself.

“We’re almost to the valley,” Chris says. “I think.”

“You think?” I blink a few times to focus. “Or are we lost again?”

“We were never lost,” Chris replies firmly. “We just ran into bad roads.”

“We were lost.”

“We weren’t lost.”

I sigh. “Why can’t men ever admit it when they’re lost?” I lean forward, straining to see out the sleet-covered windshield. “Chris, that’s the Interstate.”

The narrow back road we’re on curves up alongside the mountain and drops off underneath the freeway. Thanks to the EMP, there’s not a single pair of headlights in sight.

“The freeway’s all downhill,” I remark. “I mean, that means we are getting closer to the valley.”

“You wa

“Are you kidding?” I say. “There’s probably a hundred pileups the size of the Wall of Jericho on there.”

“There’s no other road,” he sighs. “We don’t really have a choice. We don’t have the luxury of wasting gas looking for an alternate route. We’re far enough away from the city that we might be able to squeeze by the messy areas because traffic here wasn’t as dense when the pulse hit.”

I shiver, realizing how we’ve started talking about the “pulse” like it’s some thing. Some historic event that occurred a hundred years ago when it was really only twenty-four hours back.

“Okay,” I agree. “But what if there’s people?”

“Then we deal with them.”

“And what if they get violent?”

“We defend ourselves.” He slows the car near the freeway onramp, both of us noting the cars lined up on the road. Frozen in time. “We don’t have a choice, Cassie. We need to get out of here. The weather will only get worse, and even though I might be able to handle the climate, you won’t like it.”

I sigh, knowing he’s right.

“Just keep your gun ready,” I advise, only halfway joking. “I’m ready to shoot anybody who comes within a five-foot radius.”

“I hope that doesn’t include me,” Chris chuckles, easing onto the freeway. We have to go slow, avoiding one car after another that is either turned on its side or smashed into a giant pileup. As we descend, I keep looking for the valley. Usually I would be able to see a few lights twinkling below but tonight there is nothing but darkness.

Everything’s dead. People are dead.

“Holy crap!” I exclaim. We drive by an oilrig on its side. Some of the liquid is leaking onto the road, just waiting to be ignited. I shut my eyes and think of a happy place. Someplace that’s not a graveyard of utter destruction.

It’s slow going, picking our way through the wreckage. At one point I think that cars are blocking the way entirely but Chris manages to squeeze the Mustang between the guardrail and the cars.

He’s a pretty good driver, but I’d never admit that to his face.

“Chris! I see it!” I cry, lifting myself off the seat, gri