Evajean rolled down the truck’s window and leaned out. “Jesus,” she said.

“This the furthest out you’ve been?” Elliot asked. They’d decided to drive through town towards the freeway, a route that would take them past a Wal-Mart where they hoped to pick up rifles and ammunition. This was Evajean’s idea and Elliot had been brought around to seeing it as a good one. They had a lot of desirable items in the truck and no way of knowing how bad things were out beyond the borders of town. Neither knew how to use firearms but they figured if they stuck to shotguns and only then as items to point threateningly, not so much to actually shoot, the could avoid most trouble. After that brief stop, it’d be two days of driving on I-70 before they hit Colorado.

Evajean shook her head. “I went out–to the Wal-Mart, actually–back just before Henry got sick, since we were out of things, but once he started– Once things got bad, I stayed home.” She rolled the window up again and leaded back in her seat, closing her eyes. “I didn’t know they were this bad.”

Abandoned cars made the driving difficult. Elliot had to keep his speed down and carefully weave, since the roads were clogged with vehicles, some with their doors open like the passangers had been too much in a hurry to even both closing up, and some with their windshields or side windows smashed out. But neither Elliot nor Evajean had seen a single other person since they’d set out thirty minutes ago.

Outside of their neighborhood, there’d been out buildings, street lights and power lines knocked and torn down, and a pet store with the back end of a large van sticking out the huge front windows. At this last they’d stopped, Elliot saying that maybe they should see if there were any animals still trapped inside. Evajean laughed, but agreed.

The result was a tiny black puppy curled asleep on the bench seat behind them, probably exhausted from lack of food. They’d given it water, which it lapped mightily, and searched the store for dog food, but found none. Wal-Mart would have some, Evajean said, and they’d added that to their shopping list right under buckshot.

The devastation they passed now, as they finally cleared the main downtown of Charlottesville and drove into the thinning residential areas between them and the big box store, was more subtle–but equally frightening. Most of the houses had open doors and windows and at several they saw clothes tossed across the lawn. Nothing moved and the emptiness and odd clutter heightened the sense of a world gone.

“I always thought it’d be gorier,” Evajean said after several minutes. The stopped cars were less dense now and Elliot had increased their pace.

“What?”

“The end of the world. I mean those–you’ve seen them–those zombie movies. Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead–”

“Night of the Living Dead,” he said.

“Those. Everyone’s killed and torn up, there are bodies and fires.”

“We saw those burned buildings.”

She shrugged. “But I guess I thought there’d be more. Where is everyone?”

“I don’t know,” he said.