Twelve

We spend the first night on the road at a service station. The roads are bad in some places: where meteors have hit, or where there have been accidents, or where the way is blocked by a frozen traffic jam of abandoned cars. I find my way through, sometimes bumping the jeep up onto the embankment to get past. What matters is that we do not see a single Creature for the whole of the day. No shadows in the sky, no maggots, no slender, hunting monsters.

By the time we get to the station we’ve put ten or twenty miles between ourselves and the capital. I park and we climb stiffly out. I take the gun, and hold it ready as I venture into the station. The place is looted and dusty. Without the lights it is hard to see, so I wait by the entrance until my eyes adjust. With Lisa following close behind I check the main food court, the bathroom, the bar. There is a dead body in the back rooms, dried out and fly-struck, tacky blood dried in a lake around it. A knife discarded by its side. I don’t look too closely, shutting the door before Lisa can see.

Other than that, the station is clear. We find food behind the counter in the bar; packets of crisps and couple of tins. Boxes of dried potato and packet soup, enough to survive for a little while. We sit at one of the tables and eat cold spaghetti. After that we search some more and find a torch and batteries in the shop. Bottled water and chocolate and sweets–most of the stock appears to have been looted, but some still remains.

“This is good,” says Lisa. “I knew this was the right idea.”

“We’ll be okay now, I think.” We’re sitting in the middle of the food court at one of those cheap plastic tables they have. It is just beginning to get dark outside. It is so quiet it feels like we are the only ones left on earth. Maybe we are.

“David?” says Lisa.

“Yeah?”

“There’s something.” Lisa has one hand on her stomach and is playing with her hair with the other. She looks worried.

“Yeah?”

Sitting there in the dim lack of light, in the echoing silence, Lisa says, “I’m pregnant.”