4
Milo was the first to get up. He had moved the barricade back and scavenged for anything that might be useful. He didn’t find much and wanted to get going, his stomach pushing the need to roam. He had been quite a nomad, moving from place to place until the local resources were gone. The area around the apartment building was stripped clean and that told him that they weren’t very far from other people. Someone had been there to take the resources, and Milo wanted to get out of there before he had to find out who it was.
When he got back into the room they had slept in, Michael was finally getting up. “You’re already up?”
He nodded and moved to pick up the few items he had pulled out of his pockets before laying down the night before. “Yeah, I have already been out. There isn’t anything around here to eat. Other people must live around here. We need to leave.”
Michael was still trying to get the sleep out of his eyes. The boy was talking in earnest, looking at him with large eyes, but Michael would have much rather just sat for a few minutes. “Do we have to leave right now?”
“We should.”
He heard something in his voice that pulled him up from his position. Picking up his own knife that laid beside him, Michael stood up and walked towards the door. “Well let’s go find something to eat. I am starving.”
Milo was happy about Michael's reluctant motivation to leave. He wouldn’t have pushed much more, but he was more than ready to go. He had a bad feeling, and getting some distance between themselves and that place was a good thing. Leading them out and down the stairs, the sun blinded him as he squinted. “I found his tracks this way. He is a ways ahead. The tracks are older, but if we move faster…”
“Are you trying to say that I am slowing us down?”
Milo nodded. He wasn’t going to say it, but they both knew that it was true. Michael was used to being on his own and there was no rush in his travels. He didn’t run from danger; he took it out on his own terms, much like he was doing with Billy. For a thin, wisp of a man like Milo, he didn’t stand a chance against most in a fight. He had learned that his survival meant he had learned to go unseen and to get out of an area quickly. He had wished more than once that his older companion felt the same way.
Michael did pick up his pace a little, but not by much. Milo was aggravated that he was moving so slowly, so he was a little happier when they started to make headway. There had been no real wind or rain, so Billy’s tracks were clear. Near the end of the second day, it was getting late and Michael was ready to slow down for the night. He had managed to catch and kill a snake. It wasn’t his favorite food, a mixture of fish and chicken flavor, but it was better than nothing.
He was about to say something to Milo, get him to start looking for a place, when he saw what looked like a convergent of several footprints all together. It looked like Billy had some company and then went off with them. Michael stopped. His heart pounded for several reasons and he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. Billy had met trouble. Mike could just walk away and know that Billy would most likely be taken care of for him. But on the other hand, if he wasn’t taken care of, he surely couldn’t save him just to kill him. It made no sense.
“Mike, do you see that?”
Milo was now looking down and he was already back to talking in a whisper. He too was thinking what Michael was thinking. Those were a lot of footprints, and he didn’t like the idea of them somewhere in the woods with them. Billy had stayed out of sight, no doubt trying to get back without calling too much attention to himself. Michael figured he knew he was being followed. But it wasn’t him and Milo that found him. He had been found and it looked like after a struggle, he had been drug away.
“What do you want to do?”
Michael wished that the young boy would just stop talking and let him think. They had been gaining on him all day and the tracks were fresh enough that he was feeling the need to look around him. The sun was going down, casting shadows on everything and making him feel even more unsettled. “We have to find him.”
Even as Mike said it, he was already wishing that it wasn’t the case. He didn’t want to go after Billy and wind up in trouble as well. But he had made Jessa a promise and he knew that she needed that peace of mind. He wanted to give it to her, but knew that it was going to come with a price. Looking over at Milo, he realized that the boy would do whatever he wanted him to do. It didn’t look like he was very happy with the idea of going towards trouble either. It was against everything the young man had known to survive. But he would go with Michael, if that is what he ultimately decided. It felt like more responsibility to Mike.
“Are you okay with going Milo? You can always go back and I will take care of this. I don’t know who we are going to run into or how it is all going to work out.”
Milo looked at him solemnly, “Nothing is safe anymore and there are no guarantees.”
It was true but it felt sad for Michael to hear him say it. He had seen far too much in his young life and Michael hoped that his decisions didn’t cause something happen to him. “Ain’t that the truth? Well I think we should go see what is happening. I know there is a lot of tracks, so that likely means there will be a lot of people, but I just want to track them and see what is going on. We will find a place tonight and go after them in the morning. But I would like to get away from here, just in case they decide to come back.”
Milo agreed. He too wanted to get out of the circle of tracks and was ready to get into some kind of shelter for the night. It was never just people that he had to worry about, but the beasts that now took over the nights. The animals were bigger and meaner and Milo had learned to have walls and a roof by night fall. His eyes had been scanning the immediate vicinity for somewhere to hole up. He knew that he wanted to be far enough away from the tracks to give himself peace of mind, but not too far away that they had to backtrack so much in the morning.
“That looks like a good place, don’t you think?”
Milo looked over at the office building in a strip mall that he was pointing at. It was actually a horrible spot; ground floor, broken window, very little protection. But he nodded that it would do. It was almost dark and some protection was better than nothing. The world was dark with no electricity and the moon was covered by clouds. He looked up at the sky for a moment and sighed to himself. It looked like on top of everything, there was a storm brewing too.