Dylan

Back before the world went insane, the trip between Tahoe and, say, San Francisco, took only four or five hours. Maybe the better part of a day depending on how bad traffic was.

Now we were contending with broken down cars blocking the road, fallen power lines, trees, and on one memorable occasion — a roadside building that had crumbled across both lanes.

Most of it, we could either drive over — it wasn't like the power lines were energized anymore — or around either by using other lanes or by going briefly off-road if there was a shoulder.

I got really good at night driving.

Anyway, what used to take an inconvenient amount of time for a day trip stretched into the better part of a week. And that was just to get down to the Central Valley.

That was when we hit what we started to call the mega pileups.

Dozens, maybe hundreds of cars on the freeway had all piled into a mess. They were impossible to count because of the sheer pile of twisted wreckage, and the remains of fires that had gone through them.

People had turned into griffins while driving at freeway speeds.

Not a good combination.

Again, some of those we could drive around… But some completely blocked the freeway from end to end.

It was horrific and I quickly learned not to look inside those pileups.

So, we ended up switching cars.

The going was slow, not only because of the obstacles, but we didn't want to bring any attention to ourselves. We drove at night, headlights off to avoid any attention. And, we had to eat. During the day, we found a house or other structures to sleep in. Something not too damaged from the griffins.

We fell asleep to griffin screeching in the morning and woke up to them doing the same as the sun went down.

We scavenged from convenience stores, and some of the more intact cars.

A fair amount of people had emergency supplies in their cars. Water bottles, granola bars, maps, flares, first aid kits. Stuff like that.

Lilly brought up concerns about feral dogs or other wildlife gone crazy. After all, people turned into monsters. What about the rest of the planet?

But the nights were oddly barren. We didn't see many animals on the roadways. No deer, no possums… Not many birds were left visible during the day.

"The griffins are hungry," Clarissa said.

I could tell she was, too.

Whenever we hit a store, she took herself to the canned food aisle. I saw her slip cans of tuna, canned chicken, and spam into the backpack she used as a purse.

I worried about her to the point where I followed her and asked to see the feathers on her shoulder.

She gave me a dark look but turned her back to me.

I pushed down the collar of her shirt to see her shoulder blade, trying to keep my thoughts professional.

"How does it look?" she asked.

Ugh. I'd been silent for too long. Good going, Dylan.

"The feathers of gotten longer," I said, and brushed my fingers over what had been the gash in her skin. Just to make sure I got a good look, of course.

"But… the wound hasn't lengthened or anything. The feathers are just kind of… Growing out."

She nodded, and when she turned back around, her lips were in a thin line. "Let's hope there's an answer in Big Sur."

I nodded.

Traveling onward was the only thing that we could do.

The thing we didn't encounter — what we all expected to encounter, even though none of us said anything to one another — was other people.

I was certain there were survivors. Sometimes, we found evidence in cleaned out stores and cars.

One time, the line of cars stretched across the freeway was so uniform that it was clear someone had put them there.

"That's a stupid barrier," Lilly said. "The griffins will just fly over it."

"I don't think that's for the griffins," Terry said, looking around with a frown. "I think… someone's marking out their territory."

"Should we find them?" Merlot said.

We had a good score the other day of a minivan whose owner had made a grocery run just before the world went crazy. There were boxes of formula, and an extra pack of diapers for the baby.

"No," Terry said. "We push forward."

I didn't like the officious way he spoke. "Shouldn't we take a vote?"

"You can," he said, and held up his hand. "But I have the keys to one of the cars."

Clarissa rolled her eyes. "You don't need to push people around, Terry. For what it's worth, if there's a vote then I'm voting we move on, too."

That gave me a dose of reality. She needed an answer — a cure. She couldn't afford to wait.

"I'm with Clarissa," Ben said. He didn't speak much, anymore. But tended to go along with whatever Clarissa wanted.

"I'm with Dylan," Merlot said.

"Then it's three to two," Terry said. "We go on."

"You didn't even ask how I wanted to vote," Lilly said.

Terry gave my sister a knowing look. "You want to go back and help people?"

"Well… no. We need to help ourselves before anyone else."

"Well, there you go then," Terry said with a smirk.

We moved on, but I made sure to mark the location on the map, just in case.

The biggest find came when we rolled up to a giant distribution center just outside a valley town called Tracy. It was larger than several football fields put together. But what made it extraordinary was the fact that it was still intact. Fires had engulfed many of the structures within cities. Sometimes, we passed by miles and miles of rubble and blackened buildings.

However, for whatever reason, fire had not touched this distribution center. There were holes in the roof as if the people who were turned into griffins had battered their way out by main force. But the supplies inside were still intact. Most of it hadn't even been touched by rain. Thank goodness for dry valley weather.

And, it was clear that it had been visited before. Somebody had cut child-sized holes in the chain-link fence surrounding the distribution center, bypassing the razor-wire on top. The doors were unlocked, but had been blocked by cinderblocks on the corners.

"Probably to keep the wildlife out," Clarissa said.

"Probably keep the griffins out," Ben said. Whenever he did speak nowadays it was with dark predictions.

"What if there are people inside?" Marlo asked, anxiously.

Terry hesitated, but then shrugged. "Then, we go have a chat with the."

We walked in. The giant warehouse was dark, silent, and still.

Clarissa looked around and then put her hands around her mouth to call out, "Hello! Is there anybody in here?"

Her voice echoed again and again, and we heard nothing. No responses. No lights.

"Either they're hiding, or they come here to grab food and hide out somewhere else," Lilly predicted. "There's a suburb not too far away. I bet that's where they're holding up."

The place was an absolute smorgasbord of riches. The shelves were piled with goods from the bottom level to the top… And seeing as the warehouse was easily two stories tall… There was a lot of shelving to look through.

Clearly this was one of those online distribution centers that funneled items all over the US.

Terry snapped into leader mode, and I watched him with envy as he directed us to grab supplies, weapons, or anything that looked good.

There had been a huge supply of those meals-ready-to-eat that proper types like to use, but those had been picked through first. The other kids, whoever they were, had some sense. That was likely why they were still alive.

There was still a lot to go around, and soon we piled rice, bags, dry beans, and other items around the front door. All stuff that would cook well in pots.

We learned that the hard way too.

Lilly had even found a stash of those tiny propane tanks that would go well for a camp stove.

I looked around. We'd been working for a few hours and we were all jumpy about other people showing up. Except… "Where's Terry?"

"I saw him go down that way," Merlot said, jerking her thumb to the side.

Clarissa caught my eye. "You good?"

I hesitated for a moment. "I have a bad feeling."

It had been creeping up on me over the last few minutes, though I couldn't exactly say why.

That got Clarissa's attention, though everybody else was too busy rifling through our newfound riches to pay much attention.

"Do you think that there are griffins in here?" she asked in a low undertone so as not to carry.

It was certainly large enough to hide a griffin.

"No… I don't know," I said. "I think we should check on him. I don't think that he should be alone right now."

Clarissa nodded and stood up, looking at Ben. "Stay with Lilly and Merlot."

Lilly finally seemed to notice that something was wrong. "Where are you two going?"

"Just going to make sure that Terry hasn't gotten himself lost," Clarissa said, and I admired her ease of casualness.

Lilly stared at the other girl for a moment, eyes slightly narrowed as if she knew that she was lying. But then she shrugged, returning to organizing the supplies.

That was Lilly. Smart and perceptive but emotionally uncaring.

Clarissa and stood to walk down one of the large rows.

It was a main thoroughfare through the building, and the only light around came from the holes in the rooftop. We had been lucky during our journey that the moon had been out and that the sky had been clear.

But, I noticed that the moon had been waiting over the last few days. There might be a couple of nights where we wouldn't be able to travel safely. It wasn't like we could risk a flashlight.

Not with the griffins around.

At the end of the row was kind of a building within the building. Some offices, I suspected. Maybe for management, or a break room for the employees. A slight sewer smell came out of one of the buildings, making me think that there were restrooms, too.

I fell quiet as I heard someone shuffling around.

"Terry?" I called. "Are you okay in there, man?"

The shuffling stopped, and a figure moved in the semidarkness.

To my relief, it resolved into Terry.

He held in his hands to show us three bottles filled with sloshing liquid that looked amber in the dim light.

"Look what I found," he said. "Someone was hiding a big stash of rum in one of the desks back there."

Clarissa let out an annoyed breath. "We thought you got lost," she said. "And you were drinking alcohol?"

Terry smiled at her, but I didn't like that smile. It had a strained edge, and it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Well, if nothing else, it's good for sterilizing stuff, right?"

He chuckled, then uncapped one of the bottles and took a sip of it, straight up.

He winced, then offered it to us. "You want some?"

"No, thank you," I said.

Clarissa said. "No. And you're not going to be driving. If you're going to drink."

"That's fine," he said, "I could use a day off."

Then he turned and looked back to the office.

A troubled expression crossed his face. I stepped up to him, that ominous feeling in my stomach growing. "You okay?"

"Yeah man," he said quickly, too quickly. "It's just… Bad in there. You know how it is. Sometimes it gets to you."

I nodded. We didn't talk much about the things that we had seen on our way down the mountain, but and it helped that it had been a few weeks since the world had gone insane. A lot of the corpses had been cleared off and the freshness of the horror wiped away by time. But it didn't make it easy.

"Let's go back," Terry said.