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I was stirred at around four AM the next morning by what sounded like thunder. That was loud, was it thunder, or a gunshot? I wiggled out of my sleeping bag and grabbed my flashlight and handgun. The welcome center was dark to the point of almost being a tomb. The dark was only pierced by my flashlight, a 200 lumen Ozark Trail, which lit everything around me like a dim light bulb. The wind was gusting very hard and made it feel like I was back in the Arctic. There was a bright flash of lightning, quickly followed by a loud bang that sounded almost like a gunshot, confirming the first sound as thunder. I couldn't tell if it was snow or rain, I doubted given that it was the middle of winter that I would be rain, but if it was I could be in some serious trouble on my hands and may even have a repeat of the hotel incident. Guess my well of luck ran dry with the Genesis.

I walked back inside the Welcome center as the wind picked up. Raf was still asleep, somehow. I lay back down on my sleeping bag and closed my eyes. There was no way I was getting back to sleep, which sucked because I needed it badly. Survive Agent Six, die in a car wreck, what a way to go. I did somehow manage to get back to sleep, but not for long. I'd maybe been sleeping for about six minutes when the thunder came in an even louder roll than last time and woke me up again, this time though, it woke Raf too.

"Relax", I yawned, "it's just thunder."

"Sounded like a gunshot", Raf yawned.

"That's what I thought too", I replied.

"How long you been up?", Raf asked.

"Half an hour?", I said, "feels like longer."

"What time is it?"

"'Round four", I said, "if you get dressed I'll make breakfast and then we can hit the road."

Raf yawned his reply as he pulled himself out of his sleeping bag and rolled it up along with his Therma-Rest. As he dressed I pulled out the stove and warming up our cast iron pan before dressing in a white T-shirt with blue jeans and a jean jacket. I made a Mountain House Breakfast Skillet MRE that contained sausage, red and green peppers, eggs and bacon. It reminded me so much of what Dad used to do. Stop placing him in past tense. As I ate, I noticed that Raf had a solemn look on his face. Is he thinking about Mom?

"Are you okay little brother?", I asked.

"Just tired", Raf said.

"I am too", I said in reply, "but once we get to Sliverton and connect with these survivors, we'll be able to sleep peacefully again."

Fears that Sliverton may be a town full of bandits using the broadcast to lure others into a trap went unspoken. We needed something to believe, something to hope for. Worst case, if Sliverton was a bandit nest, I'd shoot our way out, we'd return home, head East or maybe West and try to rebuild our life from scratch. Maybe, it would have been better to do that in the first place? Something seemed to tell me otherwise, but...I didn't know. At best, it was a gamble.

We ate breakfast and washed the stove and skillet quickly before packing up and heading down to the truck. There weren't any stars out and the bright hue the moon was making by bedtime the previous night was gone. I couldn't see due to the dark, but I knew the cloud cover was thick. The wind was howling and carrying at least a negative five chill factor. If it rained, it could be a serious problem. The danger was that it would freeze the road and the tires of my pickup. If that was the case then we'd be stranded where we were until the ice thawed. Raf and I loaded the truck by flashlight and then climbed in. I cracked a few light sticks and tossed them into the backseat with Raf before starting my truck and pulling out.

My ultra bright lights cut through the darkness with a sharp blue glow and the inside of the truck was dimly lit by the glowing of the buttons and switches on the dash and the needles of the speedometer and RPM readouts. Raf had fallen back to sleep covered by the wool blanket I'd found in that Freightliner a few days back and with his stuffed German Shepard doll close to his side. I had some soft music playing that was from my quieter side. The band was Dark Matter and the album was titled Radio Winds while the track that was playing was Desert Winds. There wasn't any signing, it was just the sounds of acoustic guitars, a soft drum beat and some other instruments I wasn't familiar with, the stuff helped me to focus.

I had been driving for about a half hour when the rain began to come down. Thankfully, it didn't freeze when it hit my pickup. It was coming down hard and I could hear the individual drops hitting my roof. I could see the large droplets in my head and road lights as the howling wind blew them trough the beams and into the sides of my pickup. They streaked down my windshield and were wiped away by my Rain-X wipers. It's a desert truck they said, you don't need wipers they said. Whose laughing now? The sound of the heavy rain woke Raf.

"Is that rain?", he asked.

"Yeah", I said shifting my position in my seat, "coming down pretty hard is all."

"Sounds like hail."

Raf sighed, rolled over and went back to sleep. As the morning progressed, conditions didn't improve too much. Slowly the deep, penetrating darkness receded enough that I knew it was day time and could see what was around me without my headlights, but the rain did not let up, in fact it came all the harder. The wind blew the rain hard against my pick up and the constant thunk of the large drops against the metal of the truck was getting somewhat annoying. Raf had since woken up and had joined me in the front seat and was making a video log of the rain.

"The last that I heard about it, the country, well most of it", he said pointing the camera out the windshield, "was in the middle of the biggest drought in history. The rain's good not only for suppressing brush fires, but also to collect water supplies from, a few ways to do that are to set up containers with funnels tapped to them, deep cookware such as pasta pots and even trashcans with clean bags."

"Another thing you could do is use the rain to turn a hydroelectric generator", I said.

He turned the camera on me, "huh?"

"A hydroelectric generator", I said again, "you can tear apart an air conditioner and with a bit of modification to the fan blades, use the force of the rain drops to spin the electric motor. A few of them can be used to charge batteries for small devices, such as phones, tablets, laptops and flashlights, which all still have their place. I plan to build a generator like that if Sliverton turns out to be a bust."

"Cool", Raf said, "End Log Entry Eight, Journey Day Eight, Pandemic Day 38, Time is 9:41 AM."

Raf let off a large yawn, "I'm freaking tired."

"I am too", I said, "I can pull over if I get too tired, but you go back to sleep."

"Yeah Dad", Raf teased as he crawled into the back of the truck and quickly fell back to sleep.

As the morning and the miles wound on, the sky began to clear up, the wet roads began to disappear. My fatigue was slowly receding as well. I had been up earlier than four when I was going through Delta training, so I guess it was just having done it before that slowly pushed me back from the brink. At around noon, I had begun to get hungry so the next rest stop I found I pulled in.

The rest stop was dominated by a large, red brick building that was surrounded with landscaping from palm trees to small flowering bushes. There were a few cars in the small parking lot and there was a Semi Trailer with curtains drawn sitting near the exit. From where I was, I could see the cars had broken windows, bandits by my guess.

"Lunch?", Raf asked.

"Yeah", I said, "I'm starving."

Raf and I slid out of the truck and grabbed the duffel bag of food and walked into the main building. It was a fairly spacious layout with a main area I'd say was about twenty or so feet across and maybe fifteen feet wide, about the size of two living rooms. There were the two restrooms set in hallways that made right angles and there were three vending machines in front of us. The info desk was to our left and was fairly small. It was lined with all kinds of information about Virginia. A small area that held four chairs, a couple of couches and a coffee table was set about seven feet from the restrooms. There were a lot of little metal sculptures hanging around as well.

"These are cool", Raf said snapping a picture of one with his phone.

I smiled and began looking over them. One was a turtle made from a WWII combat helmet, one was a weenie dog made from a muffler and another was a small giraffe made from a piston with a Nissan logo on it.

"Wonder who made these?", Raf asked.

"Someone with a big imagination", I stated as I took pictures of my own, "I'd never have thought to do anything like this."

As I observed the sculptures, I noticed an open door in the back of the office space. I grabbed my rifle off my back and hopped over the counter.

"Cameron?", Raf asked, "what are you?"

"Something back here", I said putting my back to the wall.

I kicked the door open and hustled inside the small, blue office. In the middle of the room was a desk that had food and other supplies spread out on it. There were several cans of soups and boxes of pasta with a short barrel AKS-74U and several magazines of ammunition. The gun was desert camouflage and held a hybrid sight. I picked the gun up off the desk, it was way to small for me to shoot comfortably and effectively. But not Raf.

"Hey Raf?", I called, "come on back here."

Within a minute Raf was back with me.

"What's up?", he asked.

I handed him the small rifle, "this is your new gun."

Raf's eyes went wide, "seriously?"

I smiled, "seriously, it's time you had a man's gun."

Raf turned around and shouldered it. He tried crouching and laying on his stomach with it, testing it to make sure it was a comfortable fit for him.

"Just right", he said smiling, "thanks Cameron."

"After lunch I'll show you how to field strip it and care for it. It's an AK, so it's not too complex. And just so you know, I'm taking that sight for my AR, I'll give you my EoTech."

Raf just smiled. We walked back into the main area and set the stove up on the coffee table between the two couches. I boiled some of the egg noddles I'd found on the bus a few days ago and added our last two jars of Alfredo Sauce and mixed in some white and red pepper flakes. I wasn't sure how much longer our luck would last. When I was little, I'd often been told by my parents that as long as I've got faith, I'll make it through anything, but they'd also stressed over and over that even with faith thing's could still get rough. I wasn't sure how long our food would last, or when, or if, we would find anymore. So far, my prayers at night seemed to be working, but there was still so much that could go wrong. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, Murphy's law.

After we'd eaten, cleaned and packed up our stove and mess kits, I gave Raf a crash course in field stripping his AK. He watched as I pressed down on the button on the back of the main receiver and flipped up the dust cover, revealing the internals of the gun. I showed Raf a the piston of the gun and pushed down on the spring before sliding it out of the gun. I then pulled back on the bolt before sliding it out. The last thing I did was remove the front gas tube and show him before sticking the gun back together and doing a functionality test

"Now you try", I said handing Raf's rifle back to him.

Raf had the gun apart and back together in a little over two and a half minutes. It was a good time for his first ever run.

"Now I'll show you where to focus on cleaning this thing", I said pulling the gun apart again, "first, the muzzle brake. The factory brake has been replaced on this one, but there's always a lot of carbon and oil build up. These are not the best put together guns, so make sure you clean that well. Next, the piston.

I pulled the piston rod back out.

When you fire this gun, everything that is going down that gas tube is hitting what little surface area this part has, make sure you clean that real well. Next, gas tube, when you fire corrosive ammunition, make damn sure you get this factory spec clean."

I had Raf field strip and clean his gun a few times for practice before getting on the road. The day wound around us as we cleared mile after mile of Interstate 81. The sun's arms reached out at us in their gilded yellow, pink and orange rays and made the truck glow blue like old Vegas neon. We'd past through a couple of cites, namely Harrisionburg, Staunton, Fairfeild, Lexington and several other cites. While each city had it's history, the scars were the same, broken windows, burned cars and the lonely, decomposing remains of Agent Six's victims.

We were now on a strip of I81 that ran through some natural, hilly countryside. The road snaked through the hills and at one point we were on a size of road that over looked a valley that was at least a thousand feet deep and held an entire town within itself. It was around six PM when I spotted a mass of cars blocking the roadway. I downshifted and began pulling the truck to a stop.

"Great", I said putting the truck in park, "road block."

"What are we gonna do?", Raf asked.

"I'm gonna get out and move it", I said grabbing my Desert Eagle from underneath my seat, "your gonna stay put."

I got out of the truck and walked up to the barricade. It was constructed of a few burned out cars and even more that where still intact. As I observed the barricade, I learned that I would need to move two Ford Fusions for my Chevy to get through. I broke out the window of one of the cars with my DE and put the first car in neutral before moving it out of the way. I moved the second car out of the way and then returned to my pickup. Raf had his feet up on the dash and once again had his eyes glued to the screen of my old PS Vita and the Borderlands 2.

"How are you not bored with that?", I asked engaging All Wheel Drive and starting forward.

"Borderlands is the game with a bazillion guns", Raf said, "I'll never get bored with it."

"Don't touch any of my Dhal E-Tech guns or my Axton character."

"Hey Cameron?", Raf said, "can I ask you something?"

"Shoot", I replied shifting into fourth gear.

"If Sliverton turns out to be a bandit nest, where are we going to go?"

I thought about it for a minute. To be honest, I hadn't thought of where we'd go if Sliverton ended up being a bandit trap, or if the recording I'd been hearing was just on loop from an old radio station.

"Well", I said shifting to fifth, "I think we'd go North East, maybe into Washington, Idaho, or we may even head back to Maine and go home, clean up town and rebuild our lives there."

"Why didn't we just do that in the first place?", Raf asked.

"Because I made a promise to Mom, to Dad, that I'd get you out of danger or die trying", I stated.

Raf smiled, but didn't answer me.

Afternoon turned into evening and evening to nine o'clock at night as I crossed the state line from Virginia into Tennessee. My windows had gone up and the heater and bright lights came on as I continued to drive. The muscle pains that always seemed to accomplice me sitting for long periods of time had set in on every inch of my body and in an attempted to dull it, I'd used the last of our painkillers, to no effect. Snow was falling softly all around my truck and Raf had fallen asleep enshrouded in a wool blanket. I was nearly asleep myself when I saw the sign, "Steele Creek Park, Camping, Recreation, Exit Now". Classic camping again tonight. I got on the down ramp off the interstate and turned onto Walnut Hill Road and drove for about ten miles before coming into the small town of Walnut Hill.

My lights reflected off the snow, tail lights and paint jobs of cars lined against boarded up buildings and barricaded alley ways. I could see a few burned out houses and cars and the sidewalks were noting but an obliterated tangle of concrete and rebar. This was a 1% area. All of the cars were expensive Mercedes or BMW's and the houses looked to be in the price range in the tens of millions. I'd seen the gate when I pulled in that had been wrecked by a Dodge Ram that had a twisted deer guard. It amazed me at what looters would go through to get this stuff. I could even see a few bloated decomposing bodies still dressed in expensive looking suits.

I stopped off at a Marathon that was across the street from a store called "The Red Roster Market" to gas up from a red Ferrari semi trailer. The lights inside the store and underneath the covered area were still on. Back up generators, maybe the rich aren't such idiots after all. Unfortunately the pumps were gas and kerosene, no diesel. Find something to put Kerosene in. The tanks from the Ferrari only gave me about five gallons of gas, which brought me to a little more than three quarters of a tank. Since Raf was asleep in the truck, I walked into the store to look for any supplies I could get my hands on.

The store looked relatively untouched. Despite being in a one percent area, it was your typical convenience store. Shelves and racks lined with sodas, beer and junk food as well as assorted tools, different brands of oil and other auto stocks. On the bottom row of one shelf were several blue plastic containers that were marked, "Kerosene". Awesome. I grabbed the containers as well as some of the tools and a pair of work gloves that were also on the rack before stuffing what little of the snack foods there were into a brown paper bag with a few bottles of water and walked back out to the truck. I placed the food and tools into their bags and then proceeded with filling the three small, gallon kerosene containers. I placed the containers in the bed of the truck and tied them down with a bungee cord and then walked back into the store.

As I looked around, I couldn't help but notice that the place was almost completely empty. I knew that the food riots had been worse in the southern part of the US due to the drought, and finding this store almost completely empty had been the wake up call. Things will get scarce as we go down south. I had tried to deny it, but I just couldn't any longer. To me, it met we needed to be careful about what we used, and when. If there were large caches of food down south, then they were certain to be guarded by bandits. I played a few scenarios out in my head. No matter what happened, the out come was always the same. Bodies and spent brass are piling up as I stand here.

I walked back to my truck, awakened my turbocharged engine and drove from the gas station. I got onto Blountville Highway and after about a four or five mile drive, made an almost U turn onto Old Stage Drive. After another three or four miles I made the turn onto Steele Creek Drive and then continued to Little Lane.

I was now in a densely forested area. The little bit of bright blue moon light shone through the trees and reflected off the snow, almost eliminating the need for my headlights. I came to a left hand turn on the road and took my truck off the paved road and drove aways into the forest. I came out on what seemed to be a well used camping spot where I stopped, disengaged the drivelines, put my truck in park and shut off the engine, but left the battery on so I could see to set up the tent.

I let Raf sleep as I set up our tent and Therma-Rest's. I had slipped several hand warmers into each of our sleeping bags and then went down to the lake to wash off. I stripped off my clothes and waded down into the freezing water. I felt myself instantly relax, all of my muscles relax. It was way cold, but it felt good and the risk of getting sick was worth it to dull my muscle pains. I scrubbed myself off with a camp towel and a bottle of soap I'd lifted from the hotel about a week ago. When I was done, I slipped on my military long-johns, my blue flannel pants and shirt before sliding on my boots and walking back to camp.

I set up my small lantern in the tent along with the big one Mom had bought on our last camping trip and then built a fire about six feet from the tent. I was never one to cook over a fire, Mom had been the expert at that, so tonight I decided to give it a try. I set up the tripod that came with our old Dutch Oven and made a box of Mac' & Cheese and what Mom had always called a "Mushroom Cloud." It consisted of beef jerky, puffy Cheetos, jarred olives and of course, mushrooms. When the food was done, I walked over to the truck and woke Raf.

"Hmm?", Raf asked with a yawn as he woke, "we stopping?"

"Already have little brother", I stated, "I stopped about an hour ago, I got everything already set up and dinner's ready. After words you go down to the lake and wash up and then were going to bed."

Raf slipped out of the truck and we ate the flame broiled Mac'&Cheese and the Mushroom Clouds within the warm confines of our beast of a tent. After dinner I cleaned out the Dutch Oven as Raf took up his AK and went down to the river to clean up. I packed away the Oven and the tripod in the truck and locked it up before laying in the tent. I pulled out my journal and began writing.

We made it through Virginia and into Tennessee this evening. About two hours ago, I had stopped to refuel from a Ferrari Semi Trailer when I got the wake up call. The food riots were much worse down in the Southern part of the US due to the nationwide drought. The store I picked through today was nearly empty when I found it and it tells me that supplies like food, which has been common, and water, which we've had to ration out to get this far, will become more and more scarce the further South we travel. It means we'll have to be careful about what we use and keep a tight hold on what we have.

I closed my notebook and stuffed it back into my backpack as Raf came back. He was a little red in the face.

"Water was cold wasn't it?", I asked as he closed up the tent and crawled into his sleeping bag.

"It was like bathing in ice", Raf said, "I've never dunked in water so cold."

"It gets rid of muscle pains though", I said stretching out, "so it's worth it."

"Can't say that I argue with that one", Raf replied. He pulled his stuffed dog close to him. "I miss Mom and Dad."

I felt my heart brake.

"I do too little brother", I said, "I do too."

Raf crawled into his sleeping bag, "night Cameron."

"Night Raf", I said as sleep took a firm grip on me.