Chapter 13: In the Silence Between Checkpoints
7:14 A.M.
The next morning, they drove.
No map. No route. Just motion. Just away.
The RV moved like it didn't want to be noticed. A soft hum against the broken silence of a world that had stopped pretending to function. Cracked asphalt passed beneath them in stutters — potholes deep enough to swallow the past, roadkill fossilized into the shoulders of the highway.
Towns flickered past like dying memories. Windows boarded. Doors sagging. Mailboxes still waiting for letters that would never come. Grocery store signs missing letters like teeth. Churches with their steeples cracked in half, stained glass melted to ribbons of color on the pavement.
The farther they went, the less the world seemed to want to be remembered. As if forgetting was the last mercy it could offer itself.
Road signs leaned drunkenly, the paint scraped off, names either crossed out or overwritten with desperate warnings. Words spray-painted in rage and grief across walls, fences, overpasses.
TAKEN.
TRUST NO ONE.
SAFE ZONE = SLAUGHTER.
NOTHING STAYS DEAD.
Aria sat curled against the passenger window, knees hugged to her chest beneath a threadbare blanket. She watched her reflection blur and re - form with every turn of the RV. Two versions of her ghosted behind the glass. One clinging to some old idea of normal. The other already slipping away into the quiet.
"How far until we're safe?" she asked.
Selene didn't take her eyes off the road. Her hands rested steady on the wheel, her gaze pointed somewhere that didn't show on the dashboard. Like she was reading a different map.
"That's not the question," she said.
Aria turned her head. "Then what is?"
There was a pause. A stretch of stillness that had nothing to do with peace.
"How long can we stay human?" Selene answered.
Aria didn't reply.
She didn't know how.
12:41 P.M.
They reached the remains of a checkpoint by midday. The kind that once stopped the world from slipping too far. Now, it stood like a monument to failure.
The security gate was twisted open, one side collapsed in a tangle of rebar and rust. A booth sat half - caved in, splintered glass around its base. The wind dragged ash through the checkpoint in slow spirals.
Floodlights dangled on snapped cords. Camera lenses cracked. Tire spikes rusted into place.
A sign remained — barely legible beneath soot:
ZONE 4 – QUARANTINE ENFORCED. CLEARANCE REQUIRED.
Someone had scrawled LIARS over it in thick black spray paint.
Underneath that: a smeared handprint. Too small. A child's.
Aria leaned forward, squinting at the wreckage. "You said this checkpoint was cleared."
"It was. Three days ago."
"Then what happened?"
"They stopped reporting," Selene said. Her voice had gone flat. "That usually means someone gave up. Sealed it in and let it die."
"And the people?"
Selene's jaw tensed.
"They became numbers. Reports. Names on unread files. Data."
Aria turned away and swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She thought of the handprint. The size of it.
It was easier to look at what was left than to imagine what came before.
6:18 P.M.
They reached a place called Dry Hollow by nightfall.
The welcome sign was carved in old stone, half-covered by ivy and black dust. Someone had scrawled something beneath it in thick charcoal:
DON'T STAY AFTER DARK.
Even the birds had gone silent.
Selene parked the RV behind a burnt - out diner, its windows spider - webbed with impact fractures, one wall scorched black where fire had climbed up and left fingerprints in soot. The rear storage room still held. Cold. Sealed tight. Forgotten.
They moved inside with slow efficiency, lighting a single lantern and checking each shadow twice.
Ash lined the windowsills. Smoke clung to the corners like a memory that didn't want to fade.
On the floor, someone had drawn a frantic map in chalk — loops, arrows, little symbols that made no sense. Trails marked but never finished.
Selene crouched beside it, her fingers ghosting over the markings. Her brows furrowed like she was reading a language she used to speak.
Aria opened a tin of preserved soup, sniffed, winced, then took a bite anyway.
"Do you think anyone's still here?" she asked.
"No," Selene said. "Not alive."
Aria didn't press. Didn't ask what alive meant. Didn't ask what the alternative was.
8:05 P.M.
They counted supplies with soldier discipline.
Water: three sealed jugs.
Food: four days, maybe five.
Weapons: three blades, twelve rounds.
Medical: two kits. One worth more than its weight. One little more than bandages and hope.
Aria sat cross - legged on an overturned crate, picking at a seam in her jeans. Watching Selene work. Everything about her was precise. Nothing wasted. No motion without purpose.
But Aria saw it. In the set of her shoulders. In the way her jaw tightened between inventories. A tension like something coiled and waiting.
"Do you ever miss before?" she asked.
Selene didn't look up.
"I miss who you were," she said.
Aria blinked. "What was I?"
Selene met her eyes then.
"You were the reason I kept going."
The words dropped into the air between them, sharp enough to cut.
Aria didn't know what to say. So she said nothing. Neither did Selene.
They just kept moving.
5:39 A.M.
They left before first light. Dry Hollow behind them, dark and still and wrong. The road narrowed, winding into foothills thick with trees. The kind of woods that never let light in. Even in the day, it would feel like night here.
The shadows moved too fast. Like they were trying to outrun something, too.
Selene slowed the RV as they rolled down a dry riverbed, its surface cracked and white. No water. Just silence.
Up ahead, another checkpoint.
Not ruined. Not empty.
A barricade of stripped cars blocked the road. Five soldiers in black tactical gear stood like statues — rifles raised, visors down. A drone hovered overhead, its single eye blinking like a warning.
Selene killed the headlights. Let the RV glide forward without sound.
One soldier stepped forward. "Papers."
Selene rolled the window down halfway. "We're headed to Relocation Zone Nine," she said evenly. "Authorized three days ago."
"Clearance code?"
"Delta - Seven - Echo."
The soldier stared too long. His gaze shifted past Selene to Aria. Held there.
Selene's hand edged closer to the gearshift.
Then — he nodded.
"Go."
She didn't wait.
They drove forward, slowly, past the barricade.
Aria twisted in her seat, watching the soldiers disappear behind them, back into the fog.
"Why did that work?" she asked.
Selene's voice was quieter now.
"Because he was scared."
"Of what?"
"What's in Zone Nine."
8:11 P.M.
They stopped on high ground — a plateau overlooking a valley full of black trees and unmapped silence. The sun had died behind smoke - drenched hills, and the fires to the west had started again.
Down below, no lights. No signals. Just earth and dust and waiting.
Aria climbed to the roof of the RV, blanket wrapped tight, knees tucked in like armor. Selene joined her, boots echoing against the metal.
The wind was cold.
They sat shoulder to shoulder.
Aria's voice was barely more than breath. "What's going to happen to us?"
Selene didn't look at her.
"Everything," she said. "Too fast."
Aria glanced over. Her hair caught in the wind. "Will you let it change you?"
Selene stared out into the dark.
"It already has."
They didn't speak again.
Just two shadows beneath a fractured sky, on the edge of a world still pretending to breathe.
Day Zero.
Not over.
Not yet.