Two weeks ago
The truck stopped.
Again.
Karina sighed, sat, and then stood up. Her back had been rumbling against the back of the pickup for the past hundred miles or so, giving her back pains to go along with her ever-more-painful headache. "Why did we have to sell the shock absorbers?" she mumbled as she climbed over the thin lip that had guarded her life as she'd travelled north.
The driver, Clovis, was hunched over, a large map spread out over the wheel. He was mildly pudgy, but much cleverer than one might expect from the sports fanatic he was pre-calamity. Karina walked up to the truck door. "What happened? Why are we stopping? I mean, I'm in no hurry, but I hate just being a sitting duck out here. Is something broken?"
Clovis continued studying the map. "Well, nothing's broken. Might have some trouble starting this hunk of junk up again, but the truck's fine for now. I'd hate to leave it behind." He had told her he'd gotten the truck from a Newcago scrapyard with his buddy Turt, who was snoring in the passenger seat.
"What's the problem then?"
"I think we've drifted too far west. Take a look." He pointed at his map, then looked at the compass dangling down from the mirror. "Remember when we made that detour to avoid Ashburn? That's Minot on the map." Karina frowned as she traced his thick finger down their route. "We took this highway west, passed through Bismarck, and now we're at this junction. We'll want to avoid Helena, because I've heard there's a bunch of different Epics fighting over it. Instead, we'll be passing through Missoula, where we'll probably also be able to get some extra gas. Then we'll head north and we'll be in Edmon- I mean, Olympia Polaris - in no time."
Karina thought about it and said, "I don't like passing by Hauntsville," as she pointed to Spokane, "but it's probably necessary. We're avoiding Calgary for sure, right?"
Clovis nodded, grinned, and then said, "Then it's settled then." He got out of the truck, flipping the hood over as he did so. "Could you hold these two wires together so we can get back on the move?"
--- --- ---
One week ago
"Stop the car!"
Turt slammed on the brakes as Karina screamed from the passenger seat. "Sparks, you almost gave me a heart attack. What is it, Indy?" She frowned and said, "I'm getting out. I thought I saw some smoke in those trees over there."
Turt shrugged and said, "It's your funeral. We're almost to Edmonton; only an hour away or so. If you want to walk the rest of the way, go ahead. I'm not stopping here." Karina glared, then threw open the car door, grabbing her backpack and rifle from the back before she trekked off.
The skinny freckly guy watched her go, then said to thin air, "I know you wouldn't like it, Clovis, but hey. I'm going home."
--- --- ---
Karina batted at the brush in front of her with her rifle, cursing under her breath. "Sparking bushes. Hope there's actually something back here, else I'm walking to Edmonton for nothing." She hit a tree with her rifle, and snow fell down on top of her. "Calamity it's cold up here." She looked up, and saw that the smoke plume was only a couple dozen meters in front of her. Karina pushed through the branches and bushes with renewed urgency, until she stumbled upon what appeared to be a campsite.
Surrounded by corpses.
Karina looked around at the carnage. The fire had burned out of control slightly, burning its way to a nearby snow-covered tree, which was slowly putting the fire out. If I'd gotten here earlier, I probably would've been killed. Later, and I never would have noticed this. Looking back at the corpses, their methods of croaking varied significantly. One guy was decapitated, another impaled, and two of them had been shot, one much more than the other. Karina noticed a piece of paper in one of the female corpses' hands, and wrenched it out of her stiff grasp. It read, "Taylor Swift drank a black cherry Perrier and shared the rest with a fan during her last stadium concert"
Puzzled, Karina put the paper into her sack. Maybe it's just a treasured piece of trivia? A code, perhaps? She entered one of the several tents placed around the campfire, finding a mobile. She turned it on, and, unfortunately, it had a password on it. Sighing, she stuffed that into her pack as well, found some ammunition (into the backpack!) and started trekking north, hopefully towards Edmonton. Or, as it was called now, Olympia Polaris.
