The Nightworld - Jack Blaine [57]
We aren’t sentimental fools for too long. We get Tank strapped back into the bike and hit the road. I think about checking the convertible for anything we might be able to use, but something about the idea of taking anything that belonged to the savages we just had to kill makes me feel sick. We drive away without looking back.
I keep the bike lights off for as long as the freeway lights hold out. After a while they’re all black, and negotiating the road gets a little iffy, so I put on the headlight. There seem to be more and more vehicle carcasses, and I wonder why. Did people get this far along in their trek to . . . wherever they were trying to go, and then abandon their cars? Most of those on the road look like they were simply stopped and left; only a few are wrecked. Did some sort of transport arrive to take people en masse to some destination?
We cruise along, warily watching the rearview mirrors and the horizon before us. I figure we have another night on the road. I want to make it as far as we can before we stop, but I know Lara is exhausted. She’s a trouper, though. Every time we stop to stretch a bit, she always nods when I ask if she wants to go a little farther. She’s very quiet, though, and that worries me. I don’t know exactly what happened in that car.
When we finally stop for the night, we drive all the way down an off-ramp and cruise the area, looking for a really good spot. Finally we see a restaurant that looks fairly untouched. I hope there’s some sort of food inside, and I want to check it out. I stop the bike and swing off the seat. “Want to wait here for just a minute?”
“No. I thought we had this talk.” Lara gets off the bike.
“I guess we did.” I really wish she’d work with me, just a little. But I understand, at the same time. Being separated isn’t the best plan, maybe.
We let Tank out of his seatbelt and he runs ahead. Lara looks worried, and I am too, a little. I don’t want him to get hurt. I feel pretty bad about leaving him, but I know I’d do it again if it was Lara I was leaving for—I’m just glad this time we had a happy ending.
Tank pees, and then he sniffs all around the parking lot outside the restaurant. Lara and I look around, trying to see any sign of people. The interior of the restaurant is shrouded in darkness. I risk the flashlight and shine it inside. I don’t see anything alarming, but that doesn’t really reassure me.
“I think we should just go in,” says Lara. “And we should hide the bike in there too.” She holds the door open and waits for me to push the bike through.
“You don’t think we should check it out inside first?”
“I know we should, but I’m just so damn tired I don’t care. Plus, I’ve got a gun.” She yells the last four words into the restaurant.
“Okay then.” I shake my head, but I roll the bike through the door. It makes me feel a little better that Tank isn’t growling at anything. The inside of the place is okay—a typical dive-diner type of thing. It does appear to be safe, and I relax a bit more the farther we get inside. I roll the bike all the way to the back and point it toward a door I hope leads outside. I try the door and it opens. There’s a deadbolt on the inside that I slide home.
We look around. The back room is what I’ve come to expect in abandoned restaurants—an office room and then a pantry. This place looks untouched. The pantry is full of canned goods, and the office looks like someone will be arriving to schedule the wait-staff shifts any minute.
“Weird.” I say it out loud.
“Yeah. But there have to be places like this, places that have just been skipped so far.” Lara runs her hand over the can labels on the pantry shelf. Most of the cans are huge, enough peaches to feed five families, enough beans to make forty people fart.
“I guess.” I want to make the front door secure. “Listen, I’m going out front for a minute.”
“I’m coming.