Something to Die For by Kaye Blue

Thirty

Lucas

“So how long is thisgoing to take, you think?” she asked.

We’d been on the road for a couple of hours, thankfully uneventful hours.

I considered for a moment, then glanced at her out of the corner of my eye before looking back to the road.

“If everything goes perfectly, forty-five days.”

I glanced at her again, saw she lifted a brow, then shrugged. “So, ninety at least,” she said.

I smiled and then looked at her again before turning back to the road.

“You never struck me as a pessimist,” I said.

“Not a pessimist. But nothing ever goes perfectly. We can’t bank on that.”

“No, we cannot,” I responded.

Though I wasn’t looking at her, I could sense there was something she wanted to say.

Strange, but I guess spending that much uninterrupted time with someone would help you get to know them.

For whatever reason, I was becoming more in tune with her moods, had an idea of what she was thinking, when she was holding back.

“Something on your mind?”

“Not really,” she said.

I looked at her again, sure my expression showed I didn’t believe her.

She smiled. “Okay…so you once said something about me struck you?”

Her voice had no inflection, which left me to wonder. I’d mentioned something offhandedly one night but hadn’t explained any more. Was she asking now because she was curious, or because it meant something else?

I didn’t know, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to ask her. So instead, I just decided to answer her questions.

“You mean at the prison?” I responded.

She nodded.

“Yeah. I mean, after all, there’s not a lot to do, and you make quite an impression,” I said.

“Is that good or bad?”

I shrugged.

“Neither. Just different.”

“So how did I strike you?”

“As a conundrum,” I answered without hesitation.

“Me? A conundrum? I’m the least mysterious person on the planet,” she said.

“I disagree.”

She was undoubtedly a terrible poker player, but other than that, she was a mystery, a huge one, one that I wanted to figure out.

One that I couldn’t allow myself to attempt to try to.

“So what was the conundrum?”

“Well, you’re obviously smart. You’re a doctor.”

“There are a lot of dumb doctors. At least there used to be,” she said.

“Yeah. I guess that’s true, but you aren’t one of them. You’re very smart. And very hardworking.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

“Let’s just say, as a guest of the state, I have more than a passing familiarity with the services they offer. And for the most part, I wouldn’t say they are the cream of the crop.”

“That’s not fair. Most people just want to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay and try to do a good job,” she said.

“Sounds like you actually believe that, so I won’t argue with you. But let’s just say, you gave medical care that was better than we would expect.”

“So why is that mysterious?”

“So you’re smart, a hard worker, good with people, and you dealt with us hard cases day in and day out. So why were you doing it? I had theories, but it was a question I never really settled on an answer to.”

“Is this your way of asking now?” she said.

“Sure,” I responded.

It sounded like she was going to volunteer information, and I definitely wasn’t going to turn it down.

“Well, I’m glad that I made a good impression in terms of the work. Right after graduating from medical school, I had an internship at a huge hospital in New York. Would have been great, could have written my ticket,” she said.

“But?”

“But my father got cancer. And I had to decide whether to go do my internship and miss those last years of his life or come back home and be with him.”

“And you came back home?”

“Not at first. He wouldn’t let me. But after about eighteen months, he got worse. Even though he and my mother tried to hide it, I knew he wasn’t doing well, and she wasn’t either. So I quit that fancy internship and came to the county hospital to finish up.”

“And then to the prison.”

“Yeah. Steady work. The pay was enough to take care of some of my student loans and allow me to be close to home.”

“And after your father died?”

Maybe I shouldn’t have been asking, knew it wasn’t my place, but I was curious, so I let the question out before I stopped to consider whether I should.

“I was at loose ends. Guess you could say I was trying to find myself,” she said.

There was the faintest hint of hurt in her voice, and I wondered at it.

“But you never did?”

“No, I never did, and now…”

“And now you’re on the road with a convict during the middle of a zombie apocalypse,” I said.

“Yeah. That looks to be the sum of it,” she said.

We both laughed, the tension of the previous moment fading.

I was again struck by all this, how she made me feel so different.

Not like myself, but like the person I could have been if I’d been given the chance.

“Now who’s having heavy thoughts?” she asked.

“It’s nothing,” I responded.

She didn’t push the issue, but I knew she didn’t believe me.

Still, instead of asking, she pulled out the map and again studied it.

I had done the same thing before, had all the different routes memorized.

“I sure am glad my folks never got into GPS,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“And I guess now I have no choice but to figure how to use the damn Farmer’s Almanac,” she said, gesturing toward the book she’d taken out of the glove compartment.

“What do you mean?”

“My dad lived by this thing, but it never made a lick of sense to me. I guess I should have paid more attention.”

I didn’t respond, not wanting to step on her optimism.

To insinuate that she needed to learn how to use the Farmer’s Almanac suggested she believed we were going to live through this, live long enough for it to matter. I hoped she was right, but I wasn’t banking on anything.

“So we go north, then west,” she said.

“Yeah,” I responded.

“So this is definitely not my area of expertise, but your thinking is to stay on roads as much as we can but also stay away from population centers.”

“Yeah it’s a tough balance because we need to be close enough to get supplies if we need them, especially gas. And I don’t want to get pinned down anywhere.”

“Okay. So how long do you think we can go with the stuff we have?”

“Well, we have enough cans for about four tanks of gas in back, but I’d rather not use it all if we don’t have to and save it for emergencies. So I’m hoping we’ll get at least half a day out of this one, we’ll use one of the others, and then we’ll forage for more when we get closer to the state line,” I said.

“So you’ve thought about this before?”

“Do you mean have I been planning my escape?”

“Yeah,” she responded.

“No. It’s not as easy to break out of prison as they make it look on TV.”

She turned to me, smiled bright. “So, I guess you got lucky.”

Laughter was my only response.