Runaways- Runaways 1

Chapter 9: Peyton

We had been walking nonstop for over eight hours. The sun was beating down on us. Aaliyah had been trailing behind from the start, but now Marcus was starting to. My feet felt like lead as I dragged them through the green grass and the occasional dead anthill. I'd drank almost all the water from the bottle I'd previously filled, and I hadn't seen a creek yet.

"Anyone got any clue where we are? Like, town-wise?" Luke asked. He'd taken off his shirt and a fresh sheen of sweat covered his chest. I couldn't help looking every now and then. Not in a flirty kind of way—okay fine, yes, in a flirty kind of way—maybe.

"Somewhere just past Richmond Hill," Aaliyah answered. "I saw a sign about twenty minutes ago." She had caught up to us in the past hour or so. We'd all been walking in silence, running through the events of the last twenty-four hours I suppose. It was almost 4:30. This time yesterday I don't think I would have anticipated being out in the middle of Georgia on foot.

We'd decided to stick along the course of I-95 for now but stay far off the road so that we wouldn't risk being spotted by as many civilians. Of course, there were still plenty out on our route, visible at every street corner and every crosswalk. The shops were pretty empty though. It seemed like this area had been hit hard by the depression. I hadn't seen one building that was open besides the doctor's office and a small ice cream shoppe.

And we were some of the few without masks. We didn't have to wear them because of Covid-19 anymore; it was mostly because of the gases emitted from homes which they suspected were causing a new disease. Several people had come down with some kind of fatal sickness after prolonged exposure to certain natural gases they used to heat their homes in the state of New York.

They'd found out what the gases were and then found that they were in nearly every home in America. They weren't deadly if you were a child or teen, and you had to be exposed to them for more than three years if you were an adult, but they were still everywhere, which meant death was everywhere. There was still no cure, no vaccine, no nothing. But it had killed everyone that had contracted it.

Marcus was walking beside me when I looked up. "You okay?" he asked. "It seems like everyone else is practically dying from the heat. Could we break for a second? Maybe find a creek?"

"Hey, Marcus, Peyton!" Luke called from behind. "There's a creek just a quarter of a mile ahead," he said, holding up the map.

"Really?" His face lit up.

"We'll stop there," I told him smiling. "Wade for a little and get a drink."

"As long as it's not under a bridge."

"It's not," Luke replied. I hadn't thought he'd heard us.

"Which way?" I asked.

"Just north."

"Race you," I challenged Marcus playfully. His eyes glimmered and then we were off. I could sprint a quarter mile in my sleep, but I was only five-feet-nine-inches so he had a good eight inches of leg on me. We were there within a matter of minutes and the others caught up a few minutes after.

The creek seemed to be about thirty feet wide and two feet deep. The end wasn't in sight and neither were any people. I considered at least taking off my shirt until I remembered I had two guys here. I may have liked Marcus at one point and Luke was pretty cute himself, but that didn't mean I wanted them to see me in just my sports bra. And forget skinny-dipping.

Aaliyah clearly had a different line of thinking. She'd stripped down to her sports bra and the pair of tight shorts she'd been wearing under her jeans, though why she was wearing shorts under her jeans, I had no idea. Maybe she'd just packed them and changed really quickly. I shook my head at her and at Luke and Marcus who'd already waded in and started trying to use the purifying straws. From the wrong end. I should probably correct them on that. But that wasn't my main concern at the moment.