Part 1: The End of Mankind #6

Post date: Feb 27, 2016 12:59:58 PM

Part 1: The End of Mankind

The night wore on as Baylee maneuvered the modified vehicle over the cracked and buckled asphalt of the highway. Infrastructure repairs were virtually nonexistent since not many, except the Sperm Gather convoys, traversed the roadways.

Most of their diet and daily goods were either grown or manufactured right at the city’s Reproduction of Family Ministry. Offering only a limited supply of actual goods that were airlifted in.

Baylee’s mind wandered as she focused on the endless stretch of broken highway.

Had she done the right thing in lying to Fisher? Would her best friend understand why she had done what she had?

Baylee sighed and glanced upward. The sky was as black as the surroundings in which she drove through. No sign of starlight or the moon. No evidence of a break in the thick smog that blanketed the sky.

Baylee looked back to the road.

Yes, she’d done exactly what she should have.

Her plan, if not totally thought out, would give her and Fisher a fighting chance to change the world.

One day, maybe not in her lifetime, the people of the city, the country, and the continent, would once again see twinkling stars in the night sky and feel sunlight on their upturned faces as they watched the sun both rise and set.

Fisher’s voice, groggy from sleep, whispered through the speakers in Baylee’s helmet.

“Bay…got to pee.”

Baylee nodded and slowed the vehicle down. She turned off the asphalt and travelled quite a piece, feeling the jarring of the road’s stone surface ripple through her arms. When she was somewhat satisfied, she brought the vehicle to a stop and turned the machine off. The light from the headlight faded and both her and Fisher sat for a moment in complete darkness.

“Leave your helmet on and exit onto the road. I can’t tell exactly how much of a drop there is off the edge of the roadside. Keep a hand on the vehicle and don’t go more than six or seven steps. Take as little time as you can, Fisher. Do your business and come back fast.”

“What about you?”

“I can wait,” Baylee answered. “There’s only an hour or so left before daybreak. We’ll only have a small window of opportunity to find shelter before the sky lightens enough for us to be noticeable. So hurry up.”

Baylee felt Fisher moving behind her, unbuckling herself from the seat harness and then climbing out of the vehicle.

Baylee let her hand rest over the key to the ignition. If need be, she and Fisher could be back on the road in seconds.

Again self-doubt plagued Baylee. She’d put her friend in so much danger. Why didn’t she just come alone? Risk only herself.

Fisher was back in less time than Baylee thought she would be and as soon as Fisher was fastened back into her seat Baylee started the engine again.

A split moment before the headlight flared Baylee spotted a flash in her sideview mirror.

“Hold on!” Baylee shouted, revving the engine, forcing the vehicle back into immediate action.

It could have been nothing. A glint of light reflecting off a bent road sign, or a piece of shiny trash that had blown across the highway, but Baylee wasn’t about to take any chances.

Gravel spun beneath the vehicle’s tires as Baylee maneuvered the heavy and awkward machine back onto the highway.

She increased acceleration and the modified trike shot forward.

The headlight shone the way, once again offering Baylee a good view of the road ahead. Baylee scanned the sides of the highway, searching for any kind of movement or light. She saw neither, just the flash of light still visible in her rearview and sideview mirrors.

She accelerated more, ignoring the jarring bounce as the vehicle hit ruts and potholes in the asphalt. If she and Baylee had a chance she would have to outrun whatever was after them.

“You okay back there?”

It took a moment or two for Fisher to answer and her words were muffled and hurried.

“What the hell!”

“Sorry,” Baylee answered, grimacing inwardly.

She didn’t like the frantic pace she was forcing the vehicle to travel but she didn’t have much choice.

Baylee glanced in the sideview mirror again and saw that the flash of light was ricocheting from one side of the centre white broken line of the road to the other. She gave the engine another jolt of gas and noticed that the flash miraculously appeared to speed up before once more marginally slacking off.

“Are we…going… to…die…anytime soon? You’re…killing me…back here.”

Fisher’s broken speech pattern revealed just how much Fisher was being tossed around in the backseat. She was sure that Fisher, as she was, would be sporting bruises come morning from all the jostling around.

Baylee risked a glance in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of the seat harness biting into Fisher’s right shoulder and then the side of her neck as she was yanked backwards.

Baylee immediately let up on the gas. The harness strap slackened offering Fisher a short reprise and a little wiggle room. Baylee heard the rush of air expelling from Fisher’s lungs.

She looked once more at the sideview mirror. The flash of light had disappeared.

Baylee quickly scanned the roadway and then both sides of the highway. Blackness. All she could see was blackness, except for the red tinge to the cracked, white painted lines in the middle of the road.

Baylee was reluctant to slow the vehicle further. She half expected a barrage of gunfire or flares of fire from flame guns to rain over her and Fisher. When nothing happened, not even the pop of the trike backfiring, Baylee finally slowed down. As she did so her eyes focused once more on the roadway ahead of her. She couldn’t see any danger. No movement or flashes of light. She listened hard. Trying to detect any noise beyond the roar of the engine and Fisher’s heavy breathing. All was silent.

Baylee relaxed slightly. She slowed the modified trike.

Fisher’s hard swallow echoed through the speakers and Baylee felt her chest tighten.

She’d taken Fisher, her best friend in the whole world, on a breakneck perilous sprint for nothing. Her fears, like most times, were simply all in her head.

“Hey, Butterfield, I’m-”

Baylee’s apology was cut short as a wet mass splattered across the shield of her helmet, blurring her vision. Baylee slammed on the brakes.

Fisher cried out as the back end of the vehicle bucked and then swerved on the suddenly slick roadway.

Baylee immediately forced the front of the trike away from the swerve. She didn’t have much experience driving the modified vehicle, except in straight lines, so her instincts were completely the opposite of what she needed to do. She’d done what she had in order to avoid taking to the ditch, but unfortunately her actions were taking her exactly there.

Baylee yanked the handlebars of the trike sharply in the other direction. The back end of the vehicle fishtailed while the two back tires skidded sideways. She quickly tried to compensate by twisting the handlebars again and then again.

Baylee’s own seat harness locked into place, forcing her breath out of her lungs but preventing her from being ejected out of the now spinning vehicle.

The white lines whipped by Baylee’s vision, once, twice and then again. The muscles in her arms and forearms protesting as she desperately tried to bring the massive heavy beast of a vehicle back under control.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she could tell something was wrong. Time seemed to slow for a moment in the midst of the chaos. She closed her eyes for a second trying to focus and then that’s when she realized that the trike was on the verge of teetering sideways.

Baylee snapped her eyes open and threw her weight to the left as she jerked the handlebars in the same direction.

Her defensive actions didn’t seem to help. The trike still veered to the right and she felt the back wheel on her side leave the pavement.

Fisher’s scream echoed in her ears as the vehicle began to flip over.