"Wake and rise sunshine" Alex said as he poked Ellen in her belly, grinning.

"I already made you breakfast you lazy pork, it's time for you to get out of your stinking bed."

"You filthy little... " Ellen said angrily.

"Mind your words pork, I'm not the little one and breakfast is still waiting." Alex was still grinning when he walked out of the room. He did actually made breakfast. Not something that would have counted as breakfast in the old world but right here and now, it was a more decent breakfast then most people would get. Before Ellen stood a hardboiled egg and a few slices of old bread, along with some meat from a questionable origin. Nevertheless to say, she ate the whole breakfast, after all, you can't know for sure when your next one will be and what it will be.

"Okay you little filth, I'm ready, when are we going?"

"I'm waiting for you little sunshine, I'm ready to go."

"Stop with the sunshine Alex, or should I say darling?"

"Hell no meatbrain, come over here so we can get the hell out of this place to your precious castle."

Ellen grinned as her little plan worked. Calling each other names was a little contest they held, something to keep them busy. This time she won, he hated it to be called something like darling or honey or sweetie or any other nicknames girlfriends gave their boyfriend (or the other way around). She still hadn't figure out why he hated it so much but she did figure out why he called her sunshine. There was just too much sarcasm. Without it, it would be something nice to hear when you wake up but if some madly grinning half naked skinny guy said it to your face while the sarcasm was almost thick enough to be eaten, it's not so nice anymore. Alex had done this for several weeks and the image was now stuck to the word sunshine. The reason why he called her sunshine was the look on her face when she had to wake up at dawn. The name sunshine itself was only  because of the moment, after all, at dawn you can see the first sunshine, but her face can be described most accurately by saying that demons would run in terror black to the dark place they hatched from if they would see it.

"Are you coming or should I first kick your ass, sassypants?"

"Stop whining Alex, I'm coming already" Ellen quickly responded, acting like her thoughts didn't wander off, as she rushed down the stairs and to the barn, where Alex was waiting for her.

"okay, ready to go? and no need for smartass answers this time Alex, ready or not?"

"Ok, I am, let's get over with this. I assume you know which direction we're heading? You know I'm not from around here."

"heading north, that's where the castles are."

"Roger that boss, let's go" Alex said as he stepped on his bike, all packed.

"you know how to properly ride a bicycle right? You wouldn't be the first to be a completely failure at such a simple thing. I know people who were a few years older and not being able to ride a bike properly or swim, at least, I used to know them, don't know if they made it as well."

"Just let's get on with this Alex, I know how to ride a bike." Ellen said as she rode away.

Grinning a little Alex followed her and soon they were cycling next to each other on the road. The roads were still there, not in the best shape but it was better than normal terrain. They would drive for a couple of hours, then have a 30 min rest and then continue to drive again, as they agreed. They assumed they would have an average speed of 16 km/h and be able to drive at least 10 hours a day, with a total of 2 hours of rest in between. That way they could travel about 160 km a day, which would get them near the castles in about 2 or 3 days, assuming they would encounter problems which would cause a little delay.

                                                                                              *

"Quite a nice day actually, I must say. The weather was good, nothing unusual and no other people bothering us"

"What do you mean by good weather you fool? It has been raining for the last 2 hours!"

"As I said, that's quite good weather meatbrain. We're now sitting in some abandoned house, we didn't have to cycle in the rain and it also means it will probably be dry tomorrow too. Have you seen the clouds?  Nothing too heavy, so this will probably all that falls for the next 2 days."

"I hope that you're right Alex, would be shitty to cycle in the rain"

Alex nodded in agreement, eating a little piece of bread, while Ellen was eating the other part of it. They sat in what used to be the bathroom of the house, since that was the only room with a working lock. It wouldn't help much if they were actually under attack, but it gave them the illusion of safety. They both knew it was just an illusion, but it was all they had. They dragged their bikes up the stairs to prevent any animal, human or other being would steal or destroy something they might need. It was a hell of a work to bring them upstairs, but it was better than to lose stuff.

"Alex, can you tell me something? I've been curious for a while now."

Alex looked up to Ellen a bit curious about what she wanted to ask, then shrugged.

"Sure, you can always ask, how else do you get to know things you might need to know?"

"You did tell me you had a, or actually several, girlfriends before this started, but did you have one at the moment it started? You never told me that."

Alex nodded as he started to speak. "Yup, that's true. The answer is no, I didn't have any girlfriend or relationship at the time. I did like some girl, but it took her two weeks or something like that to tell me she had a boyfriend while she still said she liked me in that time. I guess she's dead now, she wasn't strong or anything, easily scared and didn't have the survival or killer instinct needed for this." He smirked a little saying that last part, as he was enjoying the thought.  "and how about you then? you had a boyfriend? or girlfriend, also possible, I didn't say anything but neither did you."

Ellen was still looking a bit shocked by the thought Alex would enjoy to see the girl he once liked dead. "yo meatbrain? I asked you something, remember? Close your mouth before the spiders crawl into it."

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"Alex, seriously, you find it amusing a girl that you liked is now dead? I mean, what's wrong with you?"

"It's more that I enjoy the irony of things, I mean, if she didn't have a boyfriend I would have visited her and she would have been at my place by the time it started. I mean, I could scare her already by telling her about my eating habits, or just describing how it feels like to put a knife in someone's head. It's quite impossible for her to be still alive, she could have literally be scared to death when one of those fuckers showed up. She has also told me about her boyfriend, he isn't any better than that. So instead of her visiting me, I visited you as I promised a long time ago I would. You see the irony in that? Instead of being alive, she probably died of a heart attack when she spotted one." Alex laughed a little, grinning. "So it's your turn, was you in a relationship at the time?"

While Ellen shook her head in disbelieve, she replied "nope, not at all. I like my independency a little too much for that."

"so we won't encounter a crazy ex that wants us dead because we left them or whatever they think of as the 'reason' we weren't there?"

"Nope, not as far as I know."

"Good, I hate running into crazy exes, fucks up a situation, never in a good way and..."

Ellen quickly cut off his sentence. "Shut op Alex, you talk way too much, you're annoying as fuck"

Alex grinned and tipped his head as if it was a compliment. Ellen sighed, unable to properly respond to that since he would just say something to make her look dumb, like he always did. It doesn't have to be an actually dumb thing she said, it could be something really smart but he would just make it look like something dumb. That was just one of many of his annoying habits, but overall it was a nice guy, or at least, he seemed like one. Alex smirked a little and said "you know, it's actually quite funny that no matter what's going on, the weather is still a subject to talk about. After all, no matter what's going on or in what situation you are, the weather is still relevant and it's something that will always be there, no matter in what way." Ellen nodded slightly, not even bothering to say a thing. "By the way Ellen, I think we should get to bed soon, I'll take the second watch okay? You can have the first"

"I thought that you said that we shouldn't keep watch since we're on the move, that we should save our energy for the trip."

"Yup, but I've a bad feeling and you have the first watch, that's the easy one actually. I'm used to cycling, I used to do it every day so I've developed the ability to rest while cycling. I bet that you don't... and another thing then, I'm also used to waking up in the middle of the night. I've had some emergencies which required my assistance at like 1 or 2 am local time so...."

"I get it, I get it.... if you're sure, I'll take the first watch. I still think it's a fluke but if it comforts you"

Ellen glanced back at Alex, knowing that she has one this round of their little game, but still expecting a reply.

"It actually would, you know? Well, since that's the case, I'll go to sleep. Tell me when it's my turn"

Alex laid down, covering himself with his jacket as a blanket and the backpack as a pillow. Surprised by the fact that Alex admitted how he felt, Ellen just sat back against the wall, even too surprised to say goodnight.

*

"Alex, it's your turn to watch" Ellen said while poking him between his ribs with her finger.  He mumbled a little and just turn around, trying to fall asleep again.

"Wake up filthy little bastard that you are, it was your idea after all."

She couldn't hear clearly what Alex said while he was standing up, but the words meatbrain, fuck and some words in his native language which she knew that were used for curses, were said quite often so she had a good idea of what he was trying to say.

Half sleep drunk, Alex asked if anything interesting happened during his sleep.

"Nothing so far as I know, but you'll have a 6 hours watch so anything can happen."

"Fun.... So I shall you wake up at 7 then? Will give you the opportunity to sleep a little more than 6 hours from now on, if you fall directly asleep."

"That  would mean we could get going around 8, sounds fine to me. "

While Ellen went to bed, or what functioned as a bed, namely a mattress in the bathtub, Alex positioned himself with his back against the tub and facing the entrance of the room. Trying to stay awake, he started to draw boards on the ground to play games against himself. He collected small pieces of broken tiles which would function as play pieces and placed them on the board. The smooth side would function as white and the rough side as black, since the rough side was darker of colour, which probably was because that was the side on which the tile against the wall was attached long before. Since his options were limited, he played checkers. For chess you would have needed 6 different kind of stones for each colour and there had to be significant difference between different pieces, but the same kind of pieces should also look the same. Checkers was way easier, you would only need one different aspect. Colour, like in this case could be enough, but also size or smoothness, form and many other aspects could be used. The game play itself was also easier. There were only two different kind of pieces, which could easily be produced by putting two pieces on top of each other. He played against himself for most of the night. He also tried to create sudokus, but there were two problems. The first of them was that most of the sudokus he made, weren't correct. In twenty-one of the twenty-four he made, were mistakes like two times the number nine in a small three by three squares, or any other number. The remaining three correct ones caused the second problem, namely to figure out the amount of numbers that need to be removed so it can still be solved. He kept himself busy by playing these kind of games. Except for figuring out how to survive, this was the only mental challenge there was. There were no exams anymore from school or online puzzle games for example.