I’m not sure when, but at some point during the drive I completely passed out. I had this weird dream where the car we were driving was a hearse. I hoped it wasn’t a premonition.

The thing that woke me was the squeaking noise of the brakes, and Ben hitting the steering wheel. The force of the blow shook the whole car.

The car had broken down.

We lifted the hood to see what was going on. There was a whole lot of steam coming from the engine.

“It’s dead,” Ben said. “Engine’s over heated. Looks like we’re walking from here.”

“How far is the Fortress?” Daniel asked.

“Too far. We’d never make it. Not without water.”

We had driven all through the night. It was early morning now. And we still weren’t close. That was a disheartening fact. And the water, I thought to myself. From the general store. I guess with everything that had happened, I’d completely forgotten about it.

“Then what the hell are we supposed to do?” Jack asked with a strain in his voice.

“There’s gotta be a town close by, right?” Maria offered.

Ben nodded. “Yeah, there is. But it’s completely overrun with infected.”

“Well, we don’t have a choice,” Maria said.

“No,” Jack argued. “The last time we tried to raid a town that was overrun, we nearly died. We are not doing that again. No way.”

“What else are we going to do?” I asked.

“There’s an outpost,” Ben said. “About a day’s walk from here.”

“Outpost?” Kenji asked.

“Yeah. The Fortress is the main facility in this section. And there are smaller outposts all over. They’re isolated from one another.”

“How many?”

“Not sure. Five others that I know of. But they’ve all been compromised.”

“Compromised?” Daniel asked. “How?”

“The Oz virus. And the nano-swarms.”

“But this outpost is still operational, right?”

“Yeah. The last I heard it was.”

“So how has this one survived? How has the Fortress survived?”

“Force field,” Ben answered. “Keeps the nano-swarms out. They were the only ones.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Daniel wasn’t following. “The only ones? Why? Why not the others?”

“The other facilities didn’t get their force fields set up in time. I’m guessing they didn’t really know what was going on until it was too late.”

“Which way to the outpost?” Kenji asked.

“South-East. It’s in the complete opposite direction to the Fortress.”

“So we’re gonna backtrack?” Jack said.

“We don’t really have a choice,” Kenji pointed out. “We’re in no man’s land. We have no water, no food. We have to try.”

“The last time we deviated off course we nearly died,” Jack said. “We were kidnapped and drugged. You two,” he said, pointing to me and Maria, “were nearly fed to a freakin monster.”

“That was unforeseen,” Daniel answered. “No one could’ve predicted that the priest and those people were all crazy.”

“Well, we should’ve. We should’ve been more careful.”

“What the hell were we supposed to do?” Daniel said. “We were out of food. Nearly out of water. We had to check the town for supplies.”

“And in the process we risked Maria. Have you all forgotten what our mission is? It’s not supplies. It’s Maria. She is all that matters.”

“I know that,” Daniel said. “Believe me, I know.”

“Jack, come on,” Maria said. “It was no one’s fault.”

“Yeah, it was,” Jack continued. “You guys are supposed to be highly trained soldiers. Kenji, you’re a killer. A stone cold killer. You could’ve taken out those guys when they came up to the house. You could’ve shot them all between the eyes before they even knew what was going on. And you,” he said, pointing at Daniel. “Special Forces? I don’t think so. No wonder the rest of your team didn’t make it.”

“Jack, that’s enough!” Maria shouted.

Daniel stepped forward and grabbed Jack by the shirt. He raised his arm, seconds away from punching Jack right in the jaw. Which he totally deserved.

But Daniel didn’t throw the punch.

Both guys were exhausted. Too weary to fight. Daniel knew it. He let go of Jack and pushed him away.

“Look, we’re on the edge here,” Daniel said calmly. “The very edge. We’re starving and dehydrated. I understand you’re upset. I understand you’re angry. Believe me, I do.”

“Do you?” Jack said. “Then you understand why backtracking is the worst idea ever. It’s a whole day in the complete opposite direction to the Fortress, the complete opposite direction to your camp. We’re hundreds of miles away from the Nullarbor plains. We need to keep moving. We need to keep walking. One foot after the other. That’s the only way we’re gonna make it. Hopefully we’ll get lucky and find food and water along the way. Maybe we’ll find a car or bikes. Hell, I’ll take a skateboard at this point.”

“Jack, we’re no good without water. We’re dead without it.” Kenji being all Zen, the voice of reason. “We need to get to the outpost. Rest. Recover.”

Jack took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Look, I knew it was gonna be hard. No one ever said it was going to be easy. I get that. But if we go to this outpost or whatever, we waste a day. And then it’s one more day just to get back to this point. Two days wasted. And for what? We don’t even know what’s at this outpost. It could be overrun. It could be abandoned.”

Maria stepped forward and put her arm around Jack but he brushed her off. I’ve always seen Jack as an easy going kind of guy. I guess he was, back before the world went to hell. I guess dealing with school and teachers and exams and parents wasn’t that big of a deal compared to this.

But the one thing that was really making Jack lose his mind, the one thing that was killing him, was his love for Maria. And now that she needed to be protected at all costs, it was putting Jack on edge. And having her come so close to death had caused him to snap.

“Jack, we have to go,” Maria said. “We need to rest. We need food and water. I need food and water. You need food and water. Can’t you see how you’re acting? What do you want us to do? Do you want us to split up? We can’t split up. We’re stronger together. We all need each other. We can’t fight like this.”

Jack turned away from the group and looked to the west. His hands were on his head. He took another couple of deep breaths. It looked like he wanted to pull his hair out. He had a look of anguish on his face that I’d never seen before. He wanted to get to Daniel’s camp so badly. He wanted to get Maria out of here. I could understand that. I think we could all understand that.

“Fine,” Jack finally said. “We go to the outpost. We backtrack.”