You've been walking the track for seventeen days, and not seen a single train come by.
The hotel receptionist at the last town said a train hasn't come by in twelve years and sixty-six days. You wonder why she's counting.
And yet, the rails are still shiny, and if you put your ear down close, they rumble with the incoming of a freight engine. But for seventeen days there hasn't been anything.
There's nothing but stale grass as far as you can see. The ground is as flat as concrete. You stopped noticing your aching feet about eleven days ago. Today you are only numb, and bored. You get out the instruction manual you found in the rusted frame of the Volkswagen car. You don't know if you can trust the book. After all, you took it out of the skeletal hands of its dead owner behind the wheel of the car. But for the moment, it's all you have.
You open it to a random page and read the first line: Read this book from the first page. You shut the book and stuff it in your pack. Maybe tomorrow you'll work up the nerve to open it again.
Tomorrow. It's such a foreign word. Not many people use it. Not many people can assume there'll be a tomorrow.
